


An Indecent Proposal

by kissingandcrying



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Dubious Consent, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissingandcrying/pseuds/kissingandcrying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry had met Gary once. He’d cordially accepted an invite to a going away party for the boy’s father, Lee, and Gary hadn’t been much more than a toddler at the time. He wasn’t any more or less strange than other children Harry knew. The meeting was memorable only because a week later the boy would go missing from his mother’s front yard and Harry would tell his partner Merlin, “You can’t be serious. The boy from the party?”</p><p>Or the one where twenty plus fucking years later, there’s a crack in the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's been...

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT: This work was rewritten. The plot hasn't been changed, but I rewrote each chapter with a few minor differences to help tie the story together better (I also changed it to past tense - lol). It would help to go back and read through them again, but if you can't - there is only one MAJOR difference I made, and it occurs in chapter 3. 
> 
> I tried to research as much as possible about undercover work in Britain but it's hard! The standard warnings apply: there's a significant age difference between Eggsy and Harry. This deals with kidnapping. There's also the issue of his position as an officer that might create a few issues (being in a position of authority). I think that's all.

Harry had met Gary once.

He’d cordially accepted an invite to a going away party for the boy’s father, Lee, and Gary hadn’t been much more than a toddler at the time. He wasn’t any more or less strange than other children Harry knew. The meeting was memorable only because a week later the boy would go missing from his mother’s front yard and Harry would tell his partner Merlin, “You can’t be serious. The boy from the party?”

“Yes.” Merlin responded. “Lee’s son.”

The case had gone to Harry because there wasn’t another detective who could accept it and look Lee in the eye afterwards. They couldn’t tell him that there wasn’t any lead on his son a month in - a year in - three years in when it formally went cold and the Special Crimes branch gave Harry a newer and bigger case to replace it.

So when Harry arrived to his office on a dark Tuesday morning it was already far too early to process a thing about his job. He was more than shocked to find a familiar file folder sitting on his desk, the large name ‘UNWIN’ in the tab.

“Merlin.” Harry called nervously. “Might I ask what this is?”

Imagine his surprise when Merlin's gruff voice called back, “We’ve got a lead on the Unwin case.”

The shock was evident in the way Harry’s hands went stiff over the folder. Twenty plus fucking years since the boy had gone missing and there was a crack in the case. He quickly noticed another folder beneath it with the name ‘MORTON’ in the tab and then beneath that, another one. His mouth was dry by the time he said, “There are multiple cases.”

“A lot of developments. We now have reason to believe it’s a serial case.” Merlin said.

Harry sighed deeply and dropped his coat onto the back of his seat. Not only was it too early for this, he wasn't prepared to reopen a case that had made him question his skill as an officer. It's not like he had much of a choice. The case was his through and through. Merlin joined him at his desk and gingerly laid a cup of tea in front of him. Maybe he knew how terrifying the prospect of chopping this case back open was. 

"Why this all of a sudden?" Harry asked.

“A recent kidnapping. There weren’t any initial reports to connect your case and this occurrence, but the most recent victim is a young adult female who apparently put up quite a fight.”

Harry fingered open the ‘UNWIN’ folder out of habit and pulled out the top paper. He was so, so familiar with what every sheet in the folder said. Half of the papers were his own documentation and to see his own desperate writing in so many spaces was exhausting.

“What caused the connection?” He took his seat and Merlin leaned up against his desk for a lack of another one to take.  

“A paper was dropped in the scuffle with a list of names - all children who’ve been missing since the 90’s and early 2000’s - all unsolved cases. That’s already a red flag.”

“Yes.” Harry agreed easily as he began to remove paper after paper from the file. He laid them out neatly on his desk in order. “But is it enough to open a case more than two decades old?”

“Mm.” Merlin said. He reached out and nudged Harry’s cup of tea towards him as a soft reminder that it was there. Harry looked at it and considered taking a drink, but eventually decided that he should be briefed first. He'd hydrate later. “We made an ER model of the names on the paper starting with Mr. Gary Unwin and found some interesting connections.”

Harry put a hand up and said, “And these connections are what reopened the case, yes?”

“Right,” Merlin tells him.

The name Unwin was such a passive familiarity to his thoughts - it crossed his mind almost daily how he’d never had the chance to find closure for Lee and his wife. He’d met their son once and then he’d never seen him again. Honestly, what does a boy look like after 20 years of being gone? Harry couldn't have imagined. It made him a bit ill to even consider it. 

“Christ. Perhaps this is conversation better suited for a private room. Let me get my things.”

* * *

 

Harry was 54 years old. He'd never considered himself wise but he knew  _with certainty_ that he wasn’t foolish either.

There were times when he would sit at home and watch the telly. He would listen to the state of the world and pour himself something strong, and then he'd wish that people would gather their morals and not do the things that he regularly saw or heard them do. He would call Merlin and ask for reassurance that he wouldn't die before knowing what happened to that child he was assigned to find, and when Merlin couldn't assure him of that he would go to sleep and wake up in the morning for work, just as tired as he had been the night before.

He’d never deluded himself about how good things happen to bad people. He knew that it was a case of a lucky draw that kept you from being taken from your parents, or killed in a robbery, or any other harrowing ordeal that he'd personally encountered. Never in his adult life had he taken an issue with the way the world worked. Atleast not until the Unwin case found itself back into his lap, at which point he only wondered what he’d done to deserve the tip that lead them to reopening the case of little Gary.

What they knew for certain was that he wasn’t dead. He’d been out there in the hands of someone else since the age of two. They also learned that there were four others: Roxanne Morton, Charlie Hesketh, Digby Barker, and Amelia Staunton. The names were all a slap in the face to what he thought was a simple case of kidnapping. Instead it pointed to a much darker outlook of what Gary had been up to for the last twenty years.

It was raining on the Wednesday that Harry returned to work with an updated file. Merlin had set up Harry’s station with digestives and coffee instead of tea and his own mug was steaming with what smelled like a black cup of caffeine. 

“Are you alright, Harry?” Merlin asked him before he'd even set his things down.

“I’m not entirely sure.” Harry admitted. 

“Me either. I do want to warn you that Chester's set up a meeting between the two of us. The case is developing quite quickly.”

"What exactly does that mean?"

“We know where Gary is.”

If Harry hadn't been nervous about Gary's circumstances before, his stomach was in knots now. A victim with a known location and they hadn't been retrieved. Harry could only imagine what that implied about the context of the case and the developments therein. He slowly unbuttoned his coat. 

“It's impossible to get him without drawing attention to ourselves. The situation is a bit bigger than that. It requires a lot of planning." Merlin continued.

“Right.” Harry said after a moment He hadn't eaten but the dig in his gut was unmistakably nausea, and he felt as if he might vomit all over his desk chair. Drugs or prostitution. That's what happened to that little boy. Eventually someone was going to have to explain that to Lee Unwin, and Michelle Unwin, and once they got him out, Gary Unwin. He'd had a family and Harry hadn't succeeded in putting them all back together. Instead he'd succeeded in dropping the case and then letting someone else put together the odds and ends that located him some years down the line. "Excuse me, Merlin. I... I'll be back in a moment."

“Harry.” Merlin warned. He reached out to stop Harry from turning away from him too quickly, but Harry insisted. 

“Please. I'll be sick on you."

“We all thought he was dead."

Harry gently removed Merlin's hand from his shoulder and all but jogged for the bathroom.

Harry dry heaved for a long time. It was partially the anxiety that had crawled it's way up his throat and made him sick, but there wasn't anything to throw up. He hadn't eaten since the day before and he doubted he could keep anything down for more than five minutes anyway. The toilet wasn't even clean enough for him to be so close to the bowl, but the thought that the bacteria was cleaner than he was at this point made it a non-issue. He stayed in the loo for an hour with his head hovering over the water, and he watched his reflection until his eyes went dry.

It was his own decision to return to his office. He picked himself up and washed his mouth and face down. Then he patted some colour into his cheeks and headed straight for the meeting room. 

"Good to see you, Harry." Merlin said. It was completely genuine and Harry was appreciative enough to pat him the shoulders as he walked by to let him know.

* * *

 

What Merlin eventually asked of Harry regarding the case was that he go undercover. If it'd been anyone else's case they might've turned it down. Undercover was never a requirement, but the need to rectify his earlier shortcomings and actually solve this case made him accept before he considered the consequences. Merlin also reminded them that nobody was quite as detailed as Harry, and nobody was as familiar with the case. There couldn't have been a better suited agent for the role.

It turned out that briefings for undercover work were a bit more strenuous than regular briefings. For one, Harry had  _never_ been given a packet quite as large as the one that Merlin dropped on the table in front of him.

"What's this?" Harry asked. It was the size of a small dictionary.

"The rules and regulations for an undercover agent." Merlin told him. "You've never been under before so this is a necessary precaution."

The meetings themselves over the course of the week weren't  _bad_. They were long and the information that Harry had to know inside-out was tedious. Some things that he had to remember were necessary for the safety of both himself and the victim. It was information that he couldn't mess up. He categorized them in a series of five rules:

  1. Gary Unwin is now Eggsy. 
  2. Gary - no, Eggsy - is unaware that he’s adopted. He’s also unaware that he was kidnapped at the age of two so there should be absolutely no breech of information regarding that.
  3. There’s a years long operation currently going on at The Black Prince, or the current victims' location, which prevents Eggsy’s removal from the situation. Harry is forbidden from alerting Eggsy to the circumstances of his position to prevent endangering the lives of any undercover agents or undiscovered victims.
  4. Harry’s primary job is to ensure the safety of Eggsy until it's possible to remove him without ruining the current undercover operation, or endangering the lives of any undiscovered victims.
  5. If he can manage it, Harry should also be nosy bastard and get as much information as he can  _without_ jeopardizing any of the above.



 

What should have taken weeks was spread out over the course of five days. It was heavy material. Harry had never been more suspicious of every establishment run out of London than after he got this briefing. The Thursday and Friday he spent at home preparing himself for the change was as dark and rainy a Thursday and Friday as any, except he knew he wouldn't be seeing the inside of his flat for a while yet. The policy to give agents a few days with their families was lost on a man like Harry, whose only company was a dead dog above his toilet. Merlin called and offered his company and Harry, being as lonely and desperate as he was,was quite happy to say yes. 

They were half way through a bottle of whisky when Merlin told him his cover was a bespoke tailor, and the full bottle was gone by the time Harry had the courage to ask why.

Merlin laughed and said, "Because of Mrs. Malady."

"Oh Christ, Merlin, that was years ago. I haven't worked for a seamstress since. It's not a very good cover."

“You don't forget skills like that. You also need a job that has good income, can pay for the penthouse you’ll be given in Mayfair, and one that can handle the Black Prince’s fees. Bespoke is the quite the fit. You won't actually have to make suits. There'll be someone there that does it for you. If you can just get around measurements and things, you needn't lay a hand on the technicalities. You're working for a place called Kingsman. I'd invite you to go and see it, but we need to distance you from anything related to the case so that you're not found out too early." 

"Too early? You think I'll be found out?"

Merlin polished off the rest of his wine and then shook his head. "Not sure. But if I know you, something is bound to happen. I'm praying the case if only weeks long. It'll be in and out and you won't have a chance to do anything reckless."

"I'm not reckless." Harry argued.

"You are." Merlin said. "But only when you're restless. As long as we keep you moving we'll be alright."

 

* * *

 

The counseling orders were the worst part of the preparation because Tilde didn't look or act like a counselor. Her office was sterile and quite professional, but since Harry had arrived she'd given him a bowl of fruit and a juice box, and she'd talked about three different films. It took her two hours of their first meeting before she even touched the word 'case' and another half an hour before she got to the meat of the appointment. 

“I don’t think identity maintenance will be a problem for you. What I’m more concerned about is separation anxiety,” Tilde told him.

“The only family I have left is a stuffed dog in my loo, Tilde. I hardly doubt separation anxiety will be an issue.”

“You’d be surprised how much you actually depend on Merlin. He is your family, you know. You're always together even if you don't notice it,” Tilde said. Harry was seated up on a piece of IKEA furniture that Tilde probably harassed the department into letting her get. It feels stiff and it's not comfortable, but it's not nearly as uncomfortable as Tilde admitting that she noticed Harry and Merlin being close. “You won’t be able to speak with him for the majority of this operation, you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.” Harry said.

“And you’ll be dealing with very heavy realities. These children are completely unaware of their circumstances and might even believe them to be normal. This is quite hard for people to come to terms with.”

That was perhaps the hardest part for him to digest. The idea that anyone who had been in their circumstances for long enough might believe them to be normal when they so obviously weren't. “I can hardly believe Eggsy won’t know his situation is irregular.”

“That's not something you can ask him. I assume he'll do things that boggle you and you'll have to cope with them.” Tilde reminds him. "We don't know how these children have coped with being raised in the environment they're in. We have to be cautious, and  _you_ have to remember that no matter how much you'd like to, you can't tell Eggsy who he is or who you are. I imagine that might drive you a bit mad."

"I've had twenty years to cope with it. What's another one?” Harry asks.

"Quite a bit when you're so close to the finish line."

It was true. He already felt like Gary should've been here. Like Harry shouldn't have been preparing to go undercover because they should have just gotten him out.

The counseling only lasted a few session, then Harry was blessedly given back to Merlin for detailing. It was during one of those last meetings that Harry saw Eggsy for the first time. The boys picture had been projected onto a conference room wall alongside young pictures of himself, and the updated images of the children he was kept with. 

“My god,” Harry breathed as he looked at the picture. The boy was a healthy combination of both his mother and his father right down to that beautifully big smile. 

“Right...” Merlin agreed. "Right."

The boy looked  _healthy_ , and Harry could honestly say that he hadn't been expecting that. 

The woman running the meeting was named Natasha, and she was heading the second investigation into The Black Prince. Her current undercovers were stationed as patrons and had information that she was happy to share so that Harry wouldn't have to go mining too deeply. She was stood up at the head of a large conference table that had been overwhelmed by papers and she silenced them all with a soft clearing of her throat.

“The Black Prince - seventy patrons a year - three hidden branches out of twelve that we’ve yet to find. The operation is null the second we get our hands on those locations, but for the curious, this is why your young men and women can't be removed. If we're discovered prior to finding the last locations, we could jeopardize the futures of thirty plus children. You're on strict orders to maintain the secrecy of our involvement, am I clear? There's not to be any hints or otherwise directed towards these children that anything is upcoming, or any changes are about to happen. Christine is our current undercover for this case. She’s just gotten her hands on a potential location which would knock us down to two. Harry, you'll be joining her. The two of you won't know each other, and so any communication with her should only be done in practiced circumstances. The remainder of this mission shouldn’t be longer than three months.”

"Three months?" Harry asked.

"It's the soonest we can give you," Natasha said. "Christine has been there for six already."

Harry went back to looking at the barrage of pictures on the wall. 

"I should also review the terms of your patronage at The Black Prince, Harry. This is an escort facility. None of the workers are currently underage which is a positive. The negative is that you're still paying for their time. Gary, or Eggsy, will have expectations of you and it's your job to make sure that when those expectations are let down, they don't prevent you from doing your job and they don't prevent him from trusting you. You are to abstain from illicit activities. I don't expect any more of you than that."

Trust, Harry thought briefly. What was the point of getting the boy to trust him when the entire premise of that relationship was a lie? He looked a Natasha and could feel the question coming out, but her face said that she already knew. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right - it was just something that they had to do.

All in all, Harry spent another week and a half at the Met while Specialist Crime & Operations prepared him to become someone else. Merlin was everything Harry needed in a companion while he transformed from a detective to a patron. 

It was Thursday when he grabbed a new wallet, filled with the ID's and money of Henry Devere, a 54 year old tailor with no wife, no children and a decent amount of money.

His hair had been dyed darker in some spots and lighter in others. It was surprising how different one could look with a simple change of hair. Still, it wasn't enough. He also got a new pair of glasses, stained birthmarks on his body, and a backstory that he had said so many times over in his mind he began to believe it was true. Harry slowly disappeared in all senses - he was removed from the MPS system, from all manner of online search, and in his place Henry began to spring up. It was odd to see himself in newspapers from dates that passed a while back. He looked like himself, but the minor differences made him feel like a different person. 

It was the last step he had to take before being transported to his new flat.

Merlin caught up with him on the way to the taxi and pulled him aside. "I've got something for you. Not sure you can have it now but I suspect you'll have broken more rules than this within the hour, so."

"What is it?" Harry asked as Merlin dug into his back pocket and produced a medallion. 

“A gift from Lee. For Eggsy. He meant for me to give it to you after the case went cold but I just. Well, you know." 

"Gary is alive."

" _Eggsy_ is alive, Harry," Merlin said sternly. "and yes, that means it's not quite yours anymore. It's still better suited with you than me. I see no issue with you keeping it warm for him."

“Of course.” Harry responded quietly. He reached out and took the medallion, sticking it into his pocket. Then he reached out and patted Merlin on the shoulder. It's not as if he couldn't call Merlin. It was just that their contact had to be extremely brief and extremely limited, something that neither of them was particularly fond of. He was sure to hear from Merlin soon and somehow, it was still difficult to say goodbye and get a move on.

“Be good, Harry.” Merlin said.

"I'll try my best." Harry responded. 

 

* * *

 

Harry's penthouse was in Mayfair. It was large and excessive and there was a lot of empty space. He hated it.

He still peeked around for a bit and looked at what Merlin and the others had filled the flat with. Applesauce and baby food as some sort of joke, but also food that he was quite fond of (like Mandarine oranges and salmon), classical literature, and suits, suits, suits. There was also a note in the entryway welcoming him to Grosvenor House Suites and he searched through the package to see his amenities.

A few hours in and he was already sick to death of the space they had given him. He considered sleeping to get rid of a bit of his irritation, but ultimately he settled on a very 'Henry' thing and picked up some good aged scotch, a copy of Daisy Miller, and a throw blanket. He went out to the balcony and read until the sun had set and it was too dark to continue, and then he dragged himself back inside to find some dinner. 

One thing Harry couldn't do was go to The Black Prince. It was restricted until after a week had passed. His 'homework' was to become as much Henry as he was Harry, and in order to do that he needed to familiarize himself with London from the perspective of an old john. He needed to make friends and meet the new faces of his neighbours, local bookshop owners, and food establishment workers. He liked the sound of Hatchards, some small bookshop that he could go and spend money at, and decided that for the rest of the week he'd be reading, eating, and meeting new people. He still thought about Eggsy and how close he was to meeting the boy in person. He didn't let it distract him from his responsibilities as an agent and told himself that at the very least, he had to make sure he knew bespoke tailoring inside and out. 

Because if he wanted "Eggsy" to be safe, he couldn't be Harry anymore.

 

* * *

 

The Black Prince was a shoddy little building in Kensington.

Harry was familiar with every exit, ever regular, and every drink they had on tap before he'd ever set foot in the place. He knew there were three floors and two of them were hidden beneath the building. Most importantly, he knew that this was Eggsy's home and that it had been for atleast the last eight years.

Harry had never been overly fond of pubs. The drinks were mediocre, the company more so, and the prices were usually egregious. In his opinion, the experience was reserved for younger and more social creatures than himself. 

He wasn't shocked to walk into an image he'd been familiar with in his youth: a bar full of pissed young men, and a barman who seemed all too ready to quit. In an effort to avoid both he snatched a menu from a holder by the door and seated himself at one of the empty tables around the room, flipping it open to look at his options. The menu was more sophisticated than he'd seen in more local bars. Reading through the descriptions of the food items, he almost missed the company that appeared over his shoulder.

“Welcome to the Black Prince, can I interest you in a drink?”

Harry genuinely startled. He looked over his shoulder at the young woman behind him. His eyes went up and down her body to catalogue her and he noticed that despite the stilettos on the hard wood floor, he hadn't heard her approach at all. She was thin, but it was likely intentional that she was as quite as she appeared. Harry quickly ordered a Guinness and then another two orders of pork belly. She smiled and gently took his menu from him.

“Coming right up. My name’s Gaz if you need anything.”

 

* * *

 

 

Harry had lived in London for years and he'd never once visited 'Kingsman'. Quite depressing considering that the store itself was a nice little area carved out for professionals who liked clothing, and Harry had always had a liking for nicely dressed things. Still - it was his first time walking through the doors that he realized a lot of London was still undiscovered to a man like him. How could he have ever walked Saville Row and missed this gem of a place?

There was an old, balding man standing up on a stool and he was laying fabrics on top of a high shelf. He seemed to be the only person in the building besides Harry, and he looked over his shoulder as the man walked in. 

“You must be Henry. I'm Lucas."

“Pleasure to finally meet you.” Harry said happily. He walked straight to where the man was standing to shake his hand. Lucas’ grip was firm and confident and Harry decided then that working here wouldn't be too bad. “I expected to be in last week but personal emergency, I’m afraid.”

“Understandable. It's just as well - it seems we've got new customers and they're exclusively yours. You must've done a very fine job for them to follow your tailoring."

Harry hadn't ever met anyone as warm and inviting as Lucas. He learned more about tailoring on his first day with the man than the whole previous week's books could tell him. He wanted to maintain his cover, but he did need help understanding a few things about tailoring. He asked open-ended questions and Lucas patiently answered without an inquiry into why he didn't know something and Harry soaked it up until he felt that he was ready to participate. 

They were an hour within leaving when Lucas looked up and 'tsked' under his breath. Harry, who had been reading through a catalogue on fabrics and how to match them, looked up. 

"It's always raining these days, isn't it?"

Harry looked out the window and, yes, it  _was_ raining. Actually - raining seemed a polite term for what the weather was doing to them. It was absolutely ridiculous outside. He hadn't even noticed, but people running with their heads down and their umbrellas upended by the wind were indicators that making his way home was going to be an ordeal. Harry watched a few people run by before a couple turned into their shop and closed their umbrellas, slipping into the safety and warmth of the building.

"Welcome," Harry said. 

"We're so sorry."

"Oh, god, no. Don't be. The weather is horrible. We have extra umbrellas if you need." Lucas told them.

"I doubt any of them could stand up to this," The woman laughed. "Thought we'd gotten the worst of it but it's a bloody typhoon out there."

Harry had left his umbrella at home. He turned to Lucas and asked for one of their extras before he could forget and Lucas went behind the counter and pulled one out for him. It was large enough to cover Harry's whole body and bent down around the corners to prevent it from being flipped inside out. Harry hadn't planned on walking home, but with an umbrella this nice it wouldn't have been so much of an issue.

The stormy weather hadn't let up by the time the shop closed. The couple left and it was just Harry and Lucas standing at the doorway wondering how they were going to get through it. Grosvenor was a fifteen minute walk from the shop and it would quickly become half an hour in this weather. Besides that, there were two things Harry hated. One was a sink full of dirty dishes and the other was wet clothing. If he couldn't make it home without getting soaked, he was more than willing to stay at the shop and strop about it. 

"We can get a cab. Let's go together." Lucas suggested. 

"Yes, perhaps that's... best." Harry said. He hated the weather. For god sake, was there anything worse than torrential downpour when rain was already so much of an inconvenience?

The only solace was that Hyde Park was visible from the balcony of Harry’s flat. And so after walking briskly alongside Lucas and then hailing a cab, he thought that he might be able to enjoy the weather from the safety of his glass doors. He tipped the cabbie enough for both himself and Lucas and told Lucas that his first day was the most memorable first day of jobs he'd ever had. Lucas smiled and said, "give it a week and see if we don't frustrate each other" to which Harry waved him goodbye and then ran to the front of Grosvenor and let himself in.

 

* * *

 

Harry's second visit to the Black Prince was a little more meaningful than two rounds of pork belly. Gaz greeted him at the door and shockingly, helped him to his seat.

"I was wondering when you'd come back." She said jovially. Her hair was in a braid tossed over her shoulder, hair tie sticking to the top of her breast. "I didn't catch your name last time."

“Henry.” Harry said. The name had become an extension of himself for the amount of times he'd practicing the introduction. "Henry Devere."

“That was quite a tip you left last time, Henry.” She said. “And we appreciate your business. Can I get you something to drink?”

Harry ordered water. He also put in another order of pork belly, and Gaz happily took his menu and went to the back. When she came back it was with a large glass, frosted over on the outside from the temperature of his drink. The bar was almost barren and the remaining tables were empty. Harry was the only one eating a meal. The rest of the patrons were sitting around chatting with a drink between them. 

"So, Henry. Where do you work?" Gaz asked, sitting across from him.

“I’m a tailor. Have you ever heard of 'Kingsman'?"

"No." She said. "I don't have the money to know about that."

"Well I hadn't heard of it either before a few months ago when I decided to move. Don't feel too terrible."

Gaz smiled and rested her elbows on the table, cradling her chin in her hands. "You don't work far away then."

"Not at all."

"So I expect to see more of you." She followed with. 

“I can certainly arrange that.” Harry said happily. "Can I interest you in something to eat, dear. My treat."

“Oh, I can’t. I’m working.”

“Yes, very hard. I can see that.” Harry laughed. "But if you insist. I'll have to buy you a drink some time to make up for the horrible timing of my current invitation."

Gaz watched him more closely when she asked curiously, "don't you have a wife, Mr. Devere? Seems awful indecent of you to tease me with promises if you have a missus at home."

"You're in luck." He told her, waving his bare hand at her so that she could see the empty expanse of his ring finger. "No missus to speak of."

Gaz smiled wide and then slid herself out of her seat, right up onto the height of her stilettos. She adjusted her skirt and then patted down the front of her shirt. "I'll have them send your dinner out soon. I expect to see more from you Henry."

This time, Henry slipped her a 100 pound note and a business card before he left. His server had changed to some other young woman who wasn't Gaz, but who he was sure also worked for the big boss downstairs. At the very least he put his money on the Black Prince already knowing his interest as a 'patron', and more than anything he was impatiently waiting the day that he looked up and saw Eggsy walking through the back doors of the establishment, heading for his table with a smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

It was two weeks of Kingsman work and pork belly meals before the case began to move.

Harry was in the bath. It was a Saturday, a weekend in with the bubbles up to his chin and his legs stretched up onto the knobs of the bathtub. He hardly expected to be called the moment he climbed in but stranger things had happened.

He reached for the phone behind his head and fumbled with the buttons, water droplets collecting on the keys because of his wet hands.

“Hello."

"Hello. Is this Henry Devere?"

"This is. Whom am I speaking to?"

"Chuck from the Black Prince. How are you?"

Harry's brain kicked on and he sat up a bit straighter. Chuck. Charles. Charlie? Most likely. He cleared his throat and then said, "Yes. Chuck. How are you."

“We’ve received a referral from a Christine Hamilton regarding your interest in patronage of our business. Does this sound familiar to you?"

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Would you happen to have a moment later on this week that you could spare for me? I'd like to discuss our options."

Harry climbed up out of the bathtub and ran himself into the apartment for something to write on. His windows were wide open and he nervously ran past them in search of a pen, naked as the day he was born. Freeballing in his own flat was nice, but also quite scary considering his neighbours might be able to see it. Perhaps this was something Henry would do. Harry would never have done it if he weren't desperate. 

The only pen he could find was a large purple thing that had three clickers and that he could hardly figure out how to work. He begged for patience while he looked for a paper, and then he said, "Is tomorrow too soon to meet you?"

"Not at all."

"How about Hyde park? The Wellington Arch."

"Perfect. I take it you work?"

"Yes, but I can accommodate." 

" _Wonderful_ ," Chuck purred into the phone. His voice was deep but he was well-spoken and enunciated clearly. He sounded quite educated which was, surprisingly, something that Harry was grateful to hear. "I'll see you, say... seven?"

"On the dot." Harry said before Chuck hung up on him, leaving him in the stupor of his own confusion. 

 

* * *

 

The following day was longer than it should have been. The agitation of having to wait until evening to meet Chuck was all Harry could focus on. It was noticeable enough for Lucas to ask him if he was alright midway through the day, and Harry quickly apologized and admitted to having something on his mind. Lucas didn't pry but instead offered Harry a bag of digestives and a cup of tea. Harry politely accepted them and went back to making his 'suits'. The evening still couldn't have come fast enough and by the time Harry was wrapped up and ready to brave the same dull, gray weather, he'd all but made his leg numb with how much he'd been wiggling it.

Hyde park wasn't any better. His nerves had made him a bit nauseous and he wrapped himself closely in his coat to hide the fact that his face was losing colour. He could have blamed it on the weather but it wouldn't have taken as an excuse. One look at his reflection as he slammed the taxi door shut told him that he was ill with nerves. He wrapped his scarf a bit closer around his neck and took off in the direction of the arch.

It took only ten minutes to recognize Chuck. Harry had seen pictures of him only once but he was a dead ringer for the young boy whose picture had been projected on the wall. There were few kids that Harry had met who didn't change at all in puberty. Chuck was one of those children. 

"Henry?" Chuck called when he noticed Harry approaching. 

"Yes." Harry responded. He stuck his gloved hand out ahead of himself so that Chuck could shake it. The boy had a firm grip and he pulled Harry just a bit closer with each shake. "Am I that recognizable?"

"People with money tend to stand out." Chuck said. "You're the only one here who looks like he carries a business card."

Harry's hand returned to his pocket and he pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to reveal a stack of business cards in the carrier. Chuck smiled and nodded his head, impressed.

"You wouldn't be here if I didn't carry them." Harry reminded him. "Be lucky that those with money spend it on frivolous forms of identification."

"Consider me appreciative." Chuck said. "And speaking of, I have a proposition for you that requires a bit of identification."

"The business card wasn't enough, I take it." Harry said playfully. Chuck laughed to himself and then gestured to the walkway behind them, starting off along the path and waiting for Harry to catch up.

"We got your referral weeks ago. Your background check has only recently cleared. You're an impressive man, Mr..."

"Devere."

"Devere." Chuck said. "We think that perhaps our business has a bit more to offer you than pork belly and Guinness. If you're interested, that is."

"You got a referral for me and so it's safe to assume..." Harry mumbled. He kept pace with Chuck quite comfortably. The boy looked like he'd dressed for this meeting. He was in an olive peacoat that buttoned attractively to one side and beneath it was a cotton cardigan and a pressed tie. His trousers were fitted to his body neatly and his shoes were unscuffed oxfords. Harry was impressed. 

"I'd like to invite you to the Black Prince a bit later if you have time." As an afterthought, Chuck said, "Not for dinner."

It was such a childlike thing to add onto his invitation. Harry smiled at him even though he suspected it aged him by about ten years.

"I have time. When should I be there?"

"Ten should work." Chuck said quietly. He ran his fingers through his hair absentmindedly and slowed to a stop, turning in Harry's direction. The boy was happy and his smile was just wide enough to show his teeth. "We shouldn't waste the meeting though. How about we cross before you head home?"

It had only been ten minutes and Chuck was right. Their meeting for that amount of time seemed strange and quite a waste. Not only that, but Harry hadn't really gotten any information from this meeting that he could use. Chuck had been vague and had extended an additional invite which was something that Harry had to wait for. He told himself that at the end of his shoestring of patience was Gary, holding the aglet and thanking him for plucking him out of the sewage of London. He was still a bit irritated by the additional hoops he had to jump through. This was likely the easiest part of situation himself as a patron of the Black Prince and he wasn't pleased about it.

"There's a chippie up the road called... Golden Union, I think." Harry suggested. 

"Hungry?"

"I am." Harry admitted. "And I'd like for you to join me. It'll pass the time until I'm due at the pub."

"Will we go together then?" Chuck asked. He adjusted his scarf and began to follow when Harry started walking. Harry didn't have the stomach to eat but Chuck looked like a boy with an appetite, and Harry wanted to make sure that he wasn't going hungry. The look of him was healthy. Then again, what did Harry know about healthy? Better to be safe than sorry. 

 

* * *

 

It’s late enough that any and all customers at the Black Prince are smashed to high hell. Harry had never appreciated the stench of metabolizing alcohol. Loud mouths and sloppy etiquette usually followed. He didn't have to deal with it for more than a moment, though, because Chuck took him by the sleeve and tugged him towards the bar. 

"We're going in back." He said. "You'll need an ID to show the bouncer."

"Bouncer?"

"He keeps people from walking out with the product." Chuck said. 

The fact that Chuck had called the victims 'the product' wasn't sitting well with Harry. Well fed or no, nothing good came of a boss who considered you a product. Harry's stomach began to bubble a second time and he impulsively tightened his coat around himself, ignoring the loud hollers of the bar patrons that followed him to the second set of doors. Harry knew where they were going but still couldn't find any appeasement in it.  

There was a bouncer at the door. Harry provided his license and was nudged through to what he presumed was the stairwell to the basement. It was too dark to see any noticeable decoration until Chuck got them to the bottom of the stairs, hand reached behind him to grip Harry's forearm so he wouldn't fall. The hall was sound-proof and so in addition to the dead silence that Harry nervously walked through, there wasn't a peep from the other side of the door at the bottom of it. They'd gone to the first basement level.

"I haven't given you a packet of rules and regulations, but I thought you might benefit from meeting some of our staff. There's usually a person or two that makes you want to buy."

"Where are we going now?" Harry asked. 

"To the lounge." Chuck said. He unlocked the door and pushed his way through. Harry followed. The hallway on the other side was well lit by artificial light that didn't  _feel_ artificial. There were plants strung up to the ceiling and paintings from one end of the hall all the way to other. It was a cozy walk to wherever Chuck was leading him and Harry felt disgusted with himself for even considering that this might have been a comfortable place to live. It was only a natural response to a very well decorated space, something that became easier to justify when Harry walked into the lounge and found it almost excessively upkept. The smell of petunias, popcorn, and perfume were abundant and it only took a second to locate the source of all three of those things. 

"Henry, I'd like for you to meet Anne, Digs and Mimi." 

Roxanne Morton had a ponytail. She was sat up in an egg shaped chair with her legs curled under her body. She had a book in her lap and she seemed wholly uninterested in his presence until she looked up from her reading. Her surprise was palpable. 

"It's nice to meet you all." Harry said awkwardly. 

"It's... good to see you." Roxanne - Anne said quietly. She closed her book and tucked it beside her leg and just stared at Harry for a moment, blinking some semblance of neutrality back into her expression. Harry hadn't at all missed the range of emotions she'd just revealed, though, and wondered why she'd been so shocked to see a visitor. He decided that it was worth noting and he begged himself to remember later that it had happened. There was no way to take field notes otherwise. 

"These are our current  _permanent_ residents. There are more if you look through their profiles and decide that you aren't interested."

"This is all of them?" Harry asked. He was aware that his voice had risen an octave, but Eggsy wasn't here. Only three people were in this room and none of them were the boy he was actually here to protect. He looked around the room again, eyes flitting right past Anne's curious expression to a door on the other side of the room.

"No." Anne said. Then she opened her mouth wide and yelled, " _EGGSY!"_

Harry startled and Chuck sighed. It was only a second before the door on the other side of the room swung open and Gary walked through with a small, pink box in his hand.

"Here." He called back. His voice was deep, but not gravelly. It was smooth and Harry soaked it in until he felt doused in the reality that this boy,  _here_ , who had just waltzed out of the back room of some basement in a dank pub, was the same boy who had gone missing from one of his closest friends' yards. It seemed too good to be anything but a hallucination. Yet, everything was so clearly Gary. The nose with the pointed tip, the wide and excited eyes, the sandy brown hair and  _even_ the backwards cap that he'd likely turned to keep out of the way while he tinkered with his box. Harry went stiff as a board and said, "Eggsy." 

And then Eggsy looked up and gave Harry the most vile look the man had ever seen.

"The fuck are you?"

Chuck sighed and reached out to take Harry's arm again. Harry politely waved it off and responded, "I'm Henry. Who the fuck are you?"

That seemed to pull the boy back. He froze. In his hand, the box was perfectly level and half-way to being unwrapped. Eggsy was smiling before he continued on with the strings around it, and looked down bashfully. "Eggsy."

"Well, Eggsy. It's fucking nice to meet you."

He said it with more emotion than he meant to say it with. Each word that fell out of his mouth was wired and heavy, and he couldn't remember another time that he'd been so happy to greet someone. He knew he was doing a terrible job of keeping himself together. It was more worrisome when someone's soft voice said, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm..." Harry started. "I'm a bit hot. I'm afraid I don't like enclosed areas and I'm a bit too underground for my tastes. Won't you walk me upstairs? I should..."

"I'll do it." Eggsy said happily, tossing the box into Anne's lap as he wiggled his way past her. Harry watched him approach with a feeling as heavy as lead in his stomach. He needed to get out of the basement before he went crazy. 

When Harry eventually described his first meeting with Eggsy, Merlin would call him a liar. The boy dragging Harry back through the hall and up the stairs had so embarrassingly little in common with Harry’s expectations that he seemed to be a different human altogether. The thought that he hadn't seen the boy in twenty years wasn't lost on him. It wouldn't have been significant if the world had treated them a bit kinder years ago.

"Eggsy. That's an interesting name."

Eggsy cooed happily in front of him and said, "Ooooh, go on then. Why's that?"

"I've just never heard it before." Harry said a bit plainly. They had made it back to the door that would take them up. Eggsy didn't hesitate to reach behind himself and grab Harry's hand, holding it tightly and tugging him in. The stairs were easier to see with the door open, but Eggsy didn't let go of Harry's hand until they made it to the top. He politely moved the bouncer out of the way so that the two of them could pass. What was the point of a bouncer if 'the product' could just walk itself away? Harry watched the man with a keen interest as Eggsy ran ahead of him to the bar. 

 

"I need a menu and a glass of water." Eggsy told the barkeep.

"I'm not hungry, Eggsy." Harry argued immediately. His stomach was so knotted it might have been a set of shoelaces done up by a three year old. No pork belly for him.

"It’s like some… tiny little book…" Eggsy grunted, flinging his body over the edge of the bar and reaching down underneath it himself. The bartender made an aggravated noise and approached, forcing Eggsy back to standing. He reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small booklet before slamming it on the counter. 

"Go." 

"Yes sir." Eggsy laughed. He handed the book back to Harry and then nodded in the direction of the exit. Harry wasn't ready to leave yet. He hadn't gotten any paperwork and he hadn't done  _anything_ related to patronage. He'd met Eggsy which was, admittedly, better than anything he could have hoped for. He still needed to be a part of the system if he wanted to keep Eggsy safe.

The night had gotten colder since he'd been in the Black Prince. It was a shame. He would have stood outside of those glass doors with the boy for an hour if the weather had permitted. As it was, Eggsy stepped out of the building with his arms already hugging his chest, and his nose slowly going a dashing red colour. Harry smiled at him and pocketed his book. 

"I see you're putting me out, but it was nice to meet you Eggsy."

"I ain't putting you out." Eggsy mumbled. Then he smiled back and said, "I wanna see you again but I can't see you on a walk-in. You gotta call."

"I have to call?"

"Yeah," Eggsy said. "The book. You got it on the way out. It's a menu."

"Oh." Harry said. He patted his pocket and Eggsy nodded. 

"And I'm... sorry for bein' a dickhead. Don't not come back coz of me. Please. Don't want Dean up my arse about it."

Harry watched Eggsy shift from foot to foot and then rub his arms. The night had gotten quite frigid, but winter in London wasn't much of a joke. The weather was predictable for the most part: rain. There were nights like these, though, when the chill was enough to make you wonder if it was time to pull out the gloves, hats, and scarves, none of which Eggsy had on right now. Harry slowly removed his scarf and wound it around Eggsy's neck. 

"I wouldn't worry about that, Eggsy. You've just convinced me to put in my chips."

Eggsy looked at Harry curiously. He let go of his arms for long enough to touch the scarf around his neck. Then he licked his lips and smiled.  "It's cold. I gotta go."

"Go." Harry said.

Eggsy looked at him for a moment longer and then turned around and ran back inside. He was still wearing that ridiculous baseball cap for no reason, but it matched his oversized hoodie and his loose jeans. There wasn't anything that could have matched the terrible winged trainers he had on his feet, but the entire image of who the boy had grown to be would have endeared Harry if it'd been a plastic bag. He called for a cab when he realized that a moment had passed and he wasn't doing much else but staring at the door that Eggsy had run through. He didn't want anybody asking him questions and so he sat away from the entrance with his hand in his pocket, feeling the edges of the 'menu' that Eggsy had given him. 

 

 

* * *

 

Harry hated bubble baths but Henry loved them.

Really Harry loved them and would never have admitted it, so he enjoyed using the cover of Henry to pour more bubble bath into the hot water than any sane human would allow. By the time he climbed over the porcelain and into the tub, the bubbles were up to his neck and he could hardly read the book that he'd dragged into the bath with him. It was the little book that Eggsy had given him and Harry intended to look through from cover to cover.

The rules were easy enough to remember. He could use any staff that were available as long as he paid his fee. They had to be returned, unmarked, on the third day for respite, but then could be taken out again once they'd checked in. Useless rules for a useless company. Harry felt sick just reading through it. 

“Fuck.” He said. 

Harry thought that maybe it would've been worse. Eggsy would've been missing a tooth or would've otherwise been nursing a black eye. He didn't expect to see such a vibrant young man spring from behind that door. The thought that he could even be as forthcoming as he was shocked Harry more than anything else. He hardly imagined that Eggsy's boss allowed him to mouth of to the John's that took him out for an evening.

In the middle of thinking Harry dozed off. It was long enough that by the time his phone began to chirp the water was cold and the bubbles had melted to smaller suds. Harry reached over his head to feel around for the phone he'd laid on the toilet, and then picked it up and put it to his ear. 

"Yes."

"Henry." Merlin said on the other line. Harry startled to sitting.

"Patrick... Stewart."

"Not quite." Merlin laughed. "Patrick works just fine. I'm calling to update you on the status of your employment. It seems that you've passed the background check."

"I'm not overly shocked."

"Neither are we. Have you met Eggsy?"

Harry looked down at the water swirling around his knees. The colour from the bubble bath was clinging to his skin.

"Henry?"

"He's well fed, Patrick. Not a scratch on him from what I've seen."

Merlin went quiet for a moment, and then said, "That's good. I'm happy to hear that."

"I was happy to see it," Harry admitted. 

Merlin was quiet for another moment. They were both breathing the relief of decades. Holding their breath and waiting for someone to call in the status of a body that belonged to a little boy, but which never came, was everything they'd mentally prepared for. They hadn't given this scenario a second thought. Harry dipped his fingers in the water and nodded his head, and then he sighed and said, "We have to get off the line. Thank you for calling, but all is well and I'm praying for a speedy resolution to this god awful case."

"As am I." Merlin said quietly. "Goodnight, Henry."

 

 


	2. With you is where...

Harry had no intention of downplaying the severity of Eggsy's situation. Tilde had warned him (in perhaps the most professional manner she could muster) to be careful when considering Eggsy a worker. He was a victim of a malicious and heinous crime whether he was happy and well-fed of not. 

“These men and woman are probably well taken care of,” She'd told him. “People are more likely to pay for a human's company when they think they’re doing them a favor, you understand. If they have to maintain the person then they're not doing them a favor, really. It's more of a service or... maybe necessity." 

It was a big breath of relief to find that Eggsy wasn't starved and that whatever situation he was in, he was handling it with finesse and high spirits. Harry'd have bet his bottom dollar that the presence of young men and women his age had kept him from a stunted social life. But the daunting reality remained that Eggsy needed to be collected because he was a missing person, and no optimistic outlook could have convinced Harry that realistically, Eggsy was going to experience one of the hardest transitions of his life because of it. 

Harry remained privy to his responsibilities. He went to Kingsman the next day with a clear image of Eggsy in his mind. He still hadn't managed to convince himself that this wasn't all some sick dream, but the reality had quickly been punctuated at work when his phone began to chime and he received a message from Charlie. It read,  _"Money_ _in a white envelope, back door,  and knock three times.”_

Harry wasn't deceived by how simple Charlie had made it sound. A transaction that involved humans was a sticky business no matter how the company tried to simplify it. 

He kept it together at work well enough. He'd eaten lunch with Lucas and hadn't once touched his mobile because the thought of being so close to spending time alone with Eggsy was making him anxious. He wondered if everyone who paid to sleep with young men got knots in their stomach and bile in their throat. He had to swallow around it because he had to hire Eggsy.

He left work punctually with an envelope already in hand. It took a fifteen minute detour to Grosvenor, but Harry was at the Black Prince within an hour of leaving his shift. 

"I'm sorry could you, perhaps..."  Harry started to say to the cabbie, but quickly remembered that if he wanted to be discreet then he'd have to call for more transportation later. "Never mind. I apologize."

"You need me to come back?" The cabbie asked.

"If you could. Please. Just circle for a moment and I'll be back within ten minutes."

"Should I just sit here?"

Harry peered as far around the building as he could from within the car. The back door wasn't visible and so he thought it would be alright. "If you could."

Harry's legs felt like Jelly. He pushed the car door open with shaking hands; the nerves from what he was doing were taking over his entire body and he looked like an exhausted, petrified mess by the time he reached the door. With the envelope in his pocket, he rapped his knuckles against the wood and waited for someone to answer. A scraggly old man pulled the door open and said, "Yep."

"I have a... delivery," Harry started. He reached into his pocket and produced the white envelope, then he handed it off. 

“Fanks,” The man grumbled before shutting the door on him. Harry blinked in surprise and then looked around himself to see if there was anything more to it. When there was no forthcoming person, noise, or indication, Harry stepped back from the door and started his way back to the street where... his taxi cab had driven off and in it's place was a desolate street.

"Fucking shit." Harry said. 

He walked home unaccompanied, save the small Tilde angel sitting on his shoulder telling him to breathe and let it all out, and the little Merlin angel on the opposite shoulder reminding him (with so many indecent words) that he was about to rent their coworkers kidnapped son. Harry didn't want to listen to either of them, but the conscience couldn't really be silenced even when it was taking the voice of your coworkers. A mile out from Grosvenor, he took a seat on one of the park benches about a mile out from Grosvenor and just listened to them both yap in his ear. A few people passed him by and nodded hello, completely unaware that he was going mental, and that there were the voices of his counselor and friend patronizing his life choices.

More surprising yet was that Harry wasn't bothered by either of them. Tilde was right - he missed Merlin  _terribly._

* * *

  

The small book that had been in his pocket the night before turned out to be a manual as well as a 'menu', as Eggsy had called it. The directions were inconspicuous and so it took Harry a bit of navigating to even find the contact information. On the very last page in a small set of brackets was the number and beside it, a summary of how to place an 'order'. Call them and reach out to the extension of the intended party. Leave a reservation and then the service will come to you.

Harry timidly put in Eggsy's extension and then waited to confirm the details. He took as many days as he could get, left his full name and then hung up. A second later, his mobile chimed in his hand.

_“Sorry to have missed you this time but we’re glad to have you join us. Hope to hear from you soon! Enjoy Eggsy. Xxx”_

Chuck.

"Oh god," Harry sighed. He muted his phone and sat down at the dining room table. There were places for twelve people and it felt so, so empty without anybody for company. It was like he could have filled every chair with a separate thought and then gone around the table and asked them to explain themselves. The book was still open in front of him. To be honest, Harry felt a bit sick. He hadn't truly digested what was happening, at least not in a way that allowed him to cope, and because of it was feeling some very physically unappealing things.

He didn't want to be the reason why the met couldn't save these kids lives. He couldn't live with himself if he made an error as big as the one he'd made in letting the case go cold years ago.

Harry imagined Merlin in his office, gathering and dissecting data to make sure that Harry and Eggsy were as safe as he could make them. He thought about himself in a position of power, knowing so much more than everybody else at the Black Prince. He had to gather his confidence and just keep it together for a few months at  _most_ , for a day or two at best.

He was hunched over in his thoughts when the buzzer went off. It was Grosvenor's ridiculous way of communicating with their customers. It was as if taking a large an empty space and making the loudest possible noise in it wasn't a grounds for complaint - but Harry thought that maybe he was upset because his flat was actually so empty. The sound was painfully loud. 

Harry ran to shut the communicator up and quickly found himself faced with four buttons, none of which said anything about their function. Like the proper old man that he was, he opened his palm and smacked all of them, screaming, "Yes, yes... hello?"

“ _Mr. Devere. You have a visitor_ ," A young female voice told him. 

“Does the visitor have a name?"

" _Eggsy Baker."_

"Oh, oh, yes. Please send them up. Him up. Thank you." 

Harry looked over his shoulder, suddenly a bit self-conscious about how he was using his space. It wasn't bad for a man who couldn’t give a toss about keeping clean, but it was under-decorated and a bit... dull. He hadn't used half of the space they’d given him and so by default the place was reasonably clean, but also a bit barren.

Harry couldn't remedy his lack of decor. Eggsy was knocking on the door behind him before he'd had a chance to move some of the furniture around.

Harry opened the door happily and stepped aside. Eggsy blinked at him and then nudged his way past saying, "Jesus Henry, what the fuu _uu_ ckin'  _hell_ ," and pausing for a moment in the entryway with his hand on the small satchel he'd bought with him. He spun back to look at Harry wildly and said, "What the fuck. How much money do you actually got?"

Harry closed the door on them.

"Quite a bit. Correct me if I'm wrong, and perhaps this is my age speaking for me but, isn't it a bit rude to be asking about money on the first visit?"

"The relationship's never too young to talk money," Eggsy said. "Can I have a look around, then?"

How could the boy have been so forward? It was as if he had no shame. When Harry nodded his head, Eggsy dropped his satchel and took off running. Harry watched him from the door, zooming between rooms and lifting things, peering into things, just generally being a nosy bastard. It was endearing. Harry wondered if the boy had ever walked into a place like this. Harry hung up Eggsy's satchel for him.

“How many fucking rooms do you got?” Eggsy called from one of the bedrooms.

“Five.” Harry called back. “Pick one that you like. It's yours."

Eggsy reappeared in the entryway, then, with a smile on his face. Harry wasn't prepared to remember Michelle Unwin in that moment, but the boy had his mother's look. Harry couldn't wait to take him back to his family. 

"I can take anyone I like?" Eggsy asked. 

“And whenever you're here, it's yours,” Harry told him.

Eggsy was flushed from the excitement. His chest was heaving and his hair was up at odd angles. He said, "I still can't believe you actually called. I made a tit of myself the other night and I thought for sure you wasn't coming back."

"Well I needed a hand and I thought 'who better to call than... Eggsy.' Who else would I have gone to?"

“Chuck.” Eggsy deadpanned. “He's better company for... well, basically all of it."

"You think he'd be better at helping me relocate furniture? From what I saw, you seem to be the most physically fit and that's a positive when relocating large objects."

"I'm gonna be moving furniture?" Eggsy asked coyly, wiggling his shoulders and winking at Harry. 

“Literally," Harry said. "While you're here, Eggsy, I don't want you comparing yourself with any of your... coworkers. The world is a daft place. I believe it was Shakespeare who said… and I quote, ‘focus on your own shit’. It makes life much simpler.”

Eggsy made a face so profoundly innocent that Harry had to smile.

“Yeah. That’s shit, Henry. You've just made that up.”

“It's not likely. I can distinctly recall reading that somewhere. Can I interest you in something to drink?”

"Yeah. I'll see myself to the kitchen," Eggsy said. Then he turned around and walked his way towards the kitchen.

When Harry caught up to him, he thought that Eggsy might have helped himself to the contents of the fridge. Instead, the boy was standing in awe, fiddling with the water dispenser. It was motion activated and so there was already a puddle on the floor. Eggsy apologized and then said, "Fuckin' sick, though, innit?"

“It’s just water.” Harry reminded him.

“Posh water.” Eggsy clarified. “Probably has like, minerals in it.”

Harry grabbed a cup and gave it to Eggsy. “Alright. Try it and tell me if it tastes different from what you usually drink.”

Eggsy took the cup from Harry and said, “Yeah, alright.”

While Eggsy filled it, Harry watched the cup fill slowly. Maybe he _was_  the owner of a posh water dispenser and that thought worried him because nobody really needed to have such a thing as posh water. The glass was sweating beneath Eggsy’s fingers and the kitchen was so quiet, but Eggsy looked positively sinister as the thing filled up and once it had finished, he lifted the cup to his lips and Harry held his breath.

"Well?"

“Oh, god.” Eggsy said, wiping his lips on the sleeve of his hoodie. “Tastes like money.”

Harry put his head down and sighed. So he was the posh water owner that he never wanted to be. Eggsy laughed and then finished off the glass.

"Right," Harry said. "So now that you've gotten your vitamins and minerals courtesy of my... royal dispenser, should I call you in something to eat? Anything you have a taste for I'm  _sure_ they can put on the menu."

"Did you call me here to hydrate me?" Eggsy asked. He laid his cup in the sink and then turned around and leaned against the counter. "Thought we could just... skip to the good bits first and deal with the rest of it after."

"The good bits?" Harry asked. For a moment he forgot who he was and why Eggsy was in his kitchen in the first place. When it hit him, he stuttered for something to say that would get him out of the corner he'd walked himself into. "I called you over to keep me company. Not necessarily of the biblical kind. I'm a lonely old man, Eggsy. I just like the company."

“You can’t be lonely, fit and rich. Pick two.”

It was hard to think of this being the same person as the toddler who wouldn’t even shake Harry’s hand. Eggsy had a very strong personality. He wasn't shy about much of anything, but Harry wondered if he'd have been so forward if he knew who Harry was. 

“Then allow me to pick fit and rich, since I hardly expect to be lonely with you keeping me company."

 

* * *

 

Eggsy wanted to watch a movie in Harry's room which was a bit dangerous given the circumstances. It wasn't the 'big guns' to tell Eggsy that Grosvenor had a media room, complete with mood lighting and surround sound, but it was pretty close. Eggsy didn't have the energy to consider that him and Harry would be alone because he was too busy spending his resources on freaking out about the room. Harry was indulgent. He let Eggsy flip around the electronics a bit and he took a seat, waiting for Eggsy to plop himself down on the couch beside him. 

"Any movie you'd like to watch in particular?"

Harry wasn't necessarily well versed in recent cinematic developments, but he knew  _Roman Holiday_ like the back of his hand, and was quite surprised when Eggsy asked if he could put it on.

“With Audrey Hepburn?” Harry asked.

“With Gregory Peck,” Eggsy corrected. "And, yeah, Audrey too."

"I agree that our Mr. old Gregory is quite easy on the eyes."

“I tend to like 'em a bit older,” Eggsy admitted. He turned to Harry and bit his lip, and then went back to watching the television screen. “Gregory's the one that set me on, though. At this point, I don't think I could stand a younger bloke."

"I see," Harry said.

The couch back was low. Eggsy tried to arrange himself on the couch in a way that wouldn't have him so hunched over, but eventually sighed and said, "Can I just... lean on you?"

The line between what Harry and Henry would do approached much faster than Harry was expecting. He was a crossroads of sorts from the get-go. Eggsy came in and set his stuff down and then took off and so Harry hadn't had any issue with diluting the differences between himself and Henry. Then Eggsy had actually questioned him about his motives and Harry had, once again, avoided delving too deeply into the line that separated him from the man he was acting. But now it seemed to be an issue because Eggsy wanted to get in close, and if Henry didn't want to answer too many questions, he had to allow it.

Harry was awkward when he reached out and pulled Eggsy against his chest. The boy wasn't prepared either because he made a confused noise in his throat and bumped his forehead on Harry's shoulder. It only took a second, though, for him to straighten up and adjust himself into Harry's arms, and then he burrowed his way into comfort and settled in to watch the movie, completely unaware that Harry was losing his mind. It took until Audrey cut her hair for Harry to loosen his grip on Eggsy's shoulder, and another hour before he'd forgotten there was someone in his arms at all because, well, he'd always had an appreciation for Audrey Hepburn. But a moment of rolling credits bought him back to earth in startling clarity because the second the names began to shine on screen, Eggsy was shifting in his spot and turning to look at Harry.

"Should I suck your cock now or later?"

"Excuse me?" Harry said, voice cracking mid-way through. "I'm - no, Eggsy, you. You don't have to do that."

"But you didn't just call me to watch movies, yeah?"

"I did." Harry told him. "You don't have to suck my cock."

Eggsy raised his eyebrows and pushed off of Harry's chest to put some distance between them. Then he fixed Harry with a look and said, "Coz you wanna fuck me, right?"

"No."

"Maybe.... eat me out?"

"No. Not that either."

"Am I really fucking here to watch movies?"

"Yes. Exactly that." Harry said. "I know I've spent a lot of money for your company, and I'm not trying to be rude when I say this, but when you've got as much money as I have - paying a bit more for a good movie going experience is nothing. Truly."

Eggsy seemingly settled down and Harry took a big sigh of relief. But the noise seemed to rile Eggsy up again because he said, "Is it something wrong with me? I give really good head, Henry." He looked to be a bit more  upset than Harry was expecting, and that wasn't the intention of their time together. Harry replayed the last few minutes in his head to try and find out what he'd said that'd upset Eggsy in the first place. "I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't like taking it up the arse cause it's not that fun. It hurts a bit. But I  _can_ do it, you know, so if that's what you're after I -"

"Eggsy, please," Harry begged. "It's not anything to do with you, or the way you look, or your sexual style. It's me. I can't perform under these circumstances. It's not how I work."

"So you're not gonna fuck me at all?"

"I don’t want to mislead you into thinking I’m paying for your body over the company of your person. Can't you understand that?”

Eggsy blinked at him like he'd gone mad. For the first time in ages, Harry actually felt shy about something he'd said. He couldn't figure out why he was shy about it, but understood that maybe Eggsy's perspective was a little skewed when it came to topics of a sexual nature. He waited for Eggsy to speak to him, and after a minute the boy caved.

"I really can't, no. You spend a lot of money for this, yeah? You know that, right? I'm a... prostitute." 

"Don't call yourself that," Harry said clearly. His voice was sharp and he hadn't meant to be so rude about it, but he couldn't think of Eggsy as a prostitute, not the boy was so close to being Gary again. He needed to keep those two concept separate. "Listen. I'm not asking you to understand how I think. It doesn't make sense. Not always. Please just trust me on this. It's not a fault of yours when I say that I can't receive you in that way, but that I really would enjoy if you'd spend your time with me and enjoy yourself. I am lonely, Eggsy, which is not easy to admit - but I'm admitting it in the hopes that you'll understand why I chose you and not any other person in that basement. You were the company that I want."

Eggsy seemed taken aback. He bit his lip and nodded his head and then said, "yeah, okay. Alright."

Harry felt like an arse. A completely, totally, under prepared arse. But Eggsy wasn't asking to suck his cock anymore, so it was a win. 

* * *

 

The first night that Eggsy stayed with him, the penthouse was in shambles. Eggsy  _said_ he'd been looking for a pack of cards when in reality, he'd just been nosy git all evening and in the process of being nosy, had misplaced almost everything Harry owned. Harry had walked him on him twice trying to rifle through the cupboards, both times coming up empty handed and just sheepishly apologizing for making a mess of it's innards.

"It's alright," Harry had said to him. "You have a right to look at them since I'm keeping you here."

Harry was glad that he'd hidden anything related to the case. It wasn't intentional that he'd hidden it, more so the training of years forcing him into old habits. Even in his own home he couldn't leave anything to do with work around. It wouldn't have done him any good to have visitors who knew as much information about his cases as he did. Still, Eggsy made him a bit anxious. The boy had all but cleared out every room Harry had and when he was satisfied that he wouldn't be killed and that Harry truly was just an old man looking for company, he set his sights on one of the luxurious bathtubs that Harry had and said, "I'm gonna go to my _room_ and take a bath." 

"Certainly," Harry said.  

"I won't be far away, you know... if you need me."

“I shan't. But I’ll put the kettle on for us.” Harry deflected, but the playful banter certainly distracted both of them from the awkward refusal of earlier. Though Eggsy seemed to be coping with it much better, Harry was still trying to make sure that he didn't step on the boys toes. He considered staying out of the way for the remainder of the night, but Eggsy was in the bath for an hour before Harry got nervous and went to check on him, thinking he'd drowned himself.

He peeked his head around the bathroom door and called out, and Eggsy croaked back, "I'm alright. I'll be done in a minute."

And that's how a minute after the fact, Harry found Eggsy crawling into bed with him, looking for his cup of tea.

“I didn’t make you a cup tea. I didn't want to ruin it," Harry admitted. 

“Well can I have some of yours, then?” Eggsy asked. He had stolen one of Harry's robes and it was thick, fluffy. Eggsy looked like a marshmallow with wet hair. Harry handed over his cup and smiled at the boy before watching him drink the tea.

“Which room is yours?" Harry asked him.

Eggsy looked up at Harry from the cup and he was smiling in a way that meant nothing good was coming. Harry braced himself for impact and Eggsy said, “You know, I was thinking. We don’t have to do nothing but like, maybe I could stay in here with you.” He handed Harry his cup back and Harry set it on the side table.

"I don't think that's wise."

"I’m not gonna touch you if you don’t want me to. I wouldn’t do that."

“That’s not the issue,” Harry clarified, even though he knew that that was _exactly_ the issue. As much as he wanted to trust Eggsy's restraint, he had to be real with his circumstances. Him and Eggsy had never met before. The young man who was sitting on the bed with him was a stranger, and Harry wanted to trust him as badly as anything, but understood that putting himself in that position and having it turn out bad could have jeopardized him. It was a gamble that he wasn't sure he was ready to take.

“Okay, but listen -”

“No, Eggsy. I mean it. It's not a good idea.”

“Fine.” Eggsy huffed before mumbling goodnight and shoving himself off of the mattress. He stomped his way to the bedroom door and before passing through it, turned to shoot Harry a dirty look over his shoulder. Harry sighed and gave him a minute to choose a room to run off to, and then Harry stood up and followed him. He was determined to rectify whatever anger he caused over the course of three days, but was beginning to suspect that he'd spend the entire time apologizing at this rate.

"Eggsy," Harry called him as he rounded the corner into the boy's room.

“I don’t get what you’re doing right now.” Eggsy butted in. “You call a brass and you put on _movies_ , play cards with me, let me drink all the shit in your fridge and take bubble baths, but you won't fuck me and you won't let me sleep in your bed.”

“And none of that's alright with you?” Harry asked.

“No, I don’t mind about it! But don’t treat me like that and then shove me in here! If you want company, I said I'd do it!”

Harry stood in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest. That was the truth. If he had asked Eggsy for company, then he needed to accept the company in every form. So he was at another crossroads, wondering which direction to take and leaning slowly towards whichever sign pointed him to Eggsy.  

“No, forget it.” Eggsy said sharply. “I’m bein’ a tit.”

“No, Eggsy. I think I’ve just royally fucked this up,” Harry responded. He moved cautiously to join Eggsy on the bed and then looked at him. "I understand what you do. I know it's weird that I don't want to take part in it. I'm not surprised it's come up twice in the course of a few hours. Please forgive me if I upset you, but also, I'll ask again that you understand and respect my wishes. I didn't lie when I said that you were the only one I wanted to keep me company. Who else would look at me and say, 'who the fuck are you' in that horrible shrill voice of yours? I need you to know that if I invite you into this bed with me, we won't be doing anything more than sleeping. Is that something you completely understand?"

"I swear."

Harry stood up and offered his hand in peace. Eggsy took it and allowed himself to be tugged off of the bed. "Then lets go to sleep."

Eggsy followed Harry like a puppy. He skipped after the man and then flopped onto the bed and covered himself under a heavy duvet, snuggling in. Harry climbed into the bed much more calmly and Eggsy just watched him as he removed his glasses and ruffled the form out of his hair. Once they'd both gotten settled and Harry turned the light off, he said for good measure, “This may be ill-timed, but I’m sorry you can’t see what your personality is worth, Eggsy. I can assure you it’s much more then I’m paying.”

Eggsy breathed out loud and said, "Thanks, Henry. But maybe you should get to know me a bit first."

 

* * *

 

 Harry woke up at 8 to a face full of Eggsy. Literally.

Eggsy’s arm was wound around Harry's head, and his fingers were tangled in Harry's hair. Eggsy's leg was heavy where it was hiked up over Harry's thigh, and the boy had pressed his face so tightly into the crevice of Harry's neck that there was a small, wet patch from his breathing.

“Eggsy,” Harry croaked.

Eggsy was dead weight. He didn't even move when Harry called him. If Eggsy hadn't been breathing on Harry's neck, the man would have checked for a pulse. 

"Eggsy, please," Harry tried again. He shifted himself and wasn't surprised to find that Eggsy clung tighter to him. There wasn't any way that Harry was going to dislodge himself without making a scene. When Harry looked down at Eggsy with his hair all mussed and his face calm and peaceful, he thought that in good faith he couldn't move the boy. He decided then to just call Lucas and tell him that he'd be a little late. He had something to take care of.

Being late one day wasn't much of an issue.

 

* * *

 

Since the day that Harry had signed up for the service, he'd that there would be things he couldn't have because of it. He’d never regretted not looking for a young woman to settle down and get married with, never distressed over the fact that he might get old and lonely with nobody but Merlin to call, never really cared that he had something to show for his life, but nobody to show it to. He could confidently say that it wasn't something he missed. At least, not until he came home from work on the second night when he walked home from work with aching feet and let himself into his flat. The smell of apple pie assaulted him before he'd put the key in the door, but the dream of that sort of life hadn't hit him until he'd already let himself in and tried to find where it was coming from. He walked into the living room and there was Eggsy, surrounded by dessert.

"Welcome back, babe," Eggsy cooed.

“Oh, god. What on earth is going on, Eggsy?"

“Well I know you have a sweet tooth coz yesterday you went through a whole packet of chocolate digestives,” Eggsy explained. “So I called the… servant.”

“Butler,” Harry corrected gently. 

“ _Butler,_ ” Eggsy corrected. “but I don't know which desserts exactly you like, so I just got all of 'em.”

There was a dessert in front of every seat. When Harry looked back at Eggsy, the boy looked proud of himself. He did make a picture, standing at the head of a table that was filled with every type of dessert imaginable, but not nearly enough people present to eat them. Harry just raised an eyebrow and said, "How will we eat all of these?" Merlin was going to go bonkers when he saw the transaction receipts from this. that thought alone got him smiling, but then Eggsy smiled back at him and he started  _really_ smiling.

"You want me to get your chair for you?"

"No, no," Harry said. "I can get it." 

Had anybody given Eggsy the chance to order sweets for them, or was Harry the lucky person that Eggsy showed that particular affection to. It seemed the boy wasn't only thinking of Harry, since he sat down and started tucking into the cheesecake that was in front of his seat, but Harry was grateful. He was right beside the apple pie. 

“It’s an apology for last night. I wasn’t bein’ a very good visitor."

"I don't expect you to act any specific way. It's not as if you necessarily wanted to be here."

"I did. I was happy when you called," Eggsy told him. Harry noticed that the boy had gotten them both glasses of milk when Eggsy reached for his own. 

“What do you usually do when you go to someone's house?”

“I don't."

"You don't?"

"Usually go to people's houses. Charlie - Chuck does. I get called to alleyways and basements."

Harry stopped fucking around with his food for long enough to look up at Eggsy. The boy was eating cheesecake and smiled across the wide expanse of the table at him. There was nothing worth smiling about, and the fact that Eggsy didn't seem to think this was an issue made him almost desperate to pack the boy up and take him right to the station. Harry said, "Eggsy..."

"It's fine."

"While you're here," Harry started suddenly, stumbling over his words in his mind and realizing quite quickly that they were falling out of his mouth anyway. "Whatever you want is yours. Just take it."

“Even one of them suits you have?”

Harry hadn't considered that Eggsy might like one of those. He said, "Ah, that's something that should be tailored for you. You should never take another man's suit. Would you like to accompany me to work tomorrow? We can get you fitted."

Eggsy nodded his head like maybe it wasn't a big deal, but when Harry went back to cutting up his apple pie and chanced a quick glance back across the table, the boy was smiling into his glass of milk like Christmas had come early. 

 

* * *

 

Harry tried to remember a time that he felt normal and good about living. Just existing alongside somebody and enjoying their presence. It had been a long time. He had tried to spend more time with Merlin to get them both out of their houses, so that they wouldn't fall into patterns of recluse without at least having tried not to, but on both occasions they'd eaten and then convinced each other that since they couldn't find anything else worthwhile to do, they should have just gone into the office. After the second time, Harry stopped trying to force outings that didn't want to happen. He was happy in his office. 

He didn't have that luxury being Henry Devere. His office had suddenly transformed into work that he seldom knew how to do and the only reprieve was when he spent time with Eggsy. It was only three days in - Eggsy had arrived less than 72 hours ago and yet, Harry felt like he'd known the boy in all of the years he'd neglected to find him. The two went to the park, they ate frequently, and even the fuss that Eggsy managed to kick up before he went to sleep was palatable. Harry almost forgot that the cap for the boy's company was three days, and that the next morning he had to go back to the Black Prince to entertain somebody else. 

Harry had learned a few things about Eggsy's circumstances since the boy had arrived, but perhaps the worst was that Dean mistreated him. It had been an accidental admission that Eggsy had coughed up after Harry had handed him a gift. He'd said, "If I go back with this, I can't keep it."

"Why not? The book says that we're allowed to give you gifts, and Chuck has mentioned multiple times that you can take them."

"He can. I can't."

And that conversation mutated into the ugly reality that Harry spent the entire day thinking about. Dean Baker was a man that had forced his last name onto Eggsy, and then proceeded to be an absolute cock to him. He didn't let Eggsy out for more than three days because of his own nerves. He used Eggsy as much as he pimped the boy out for obscene duties that Harry wouldn't mention to his mother. Moreover, he often forced the quick jobs on Eggsy, hence the alleyway comment from the night before. Eggsy wasn't like the other kids for whatever reason, and so to Harry's disgust, was used as a bin for all the dirty tasks the nobody else wanted to do. 

“He don't mind about me getting marked up.” Eggsy said. They were laying out on the bed together looking up at the ceiling. Harry had just come in from work and was too lazy to join Eggsy at the television. Eggsy had followed him from the door to the the bedroom and flopped right down onto the mattress with him. “One time Charlie came in with a black eye and he went mental. Someone almost broke my neck and he said, ‘shame they fucked it up’.”

Harry wanted so ferociously to snatch Dean up by his neck and drag him through London with an 'X' branded on his forehead. He wasn't above torture, though before this particular day he'd had his reservations about use of it for retribution. He'd never been so angry in his life to hear about a man. "Has he ever said why?"

“I talk too much, I never listen, always chatting shit about him when he’s not there, blah blah blah.” Eggsy said. “I don't care. He ain't much of a father."

Harry swallowed his bile and then stood up and said, "I'm sorry. I have to..." and then he jumped up and made a beeline for the kitchen. He needed water. He felt sickened, not by Eggsy, but by the reality that he'd let go over his head. What had Harry been doing for the last three days that had helped Eggsy at all? He couldn't think of it and the thought that Eggsy had to go back soon and get on his knees for a man that had yanked him from a loving family, made him dangerously ill. He felt impulsive and a bit reckless, and Merlin had warned him that he shouldn't be either of those things.

If Eggsy had been lucky, Harry thought. If Harry had looked a bit harder or gotten to him sooner. If Harry hadn't done such a bang up job of being a fucking detective, this could have been resolved before the boy had made memories of his own dull circumstances.

“Henry, what the fuck.”

Harry hadn't even gotten a drink. He'd made it to the cupboard and pulled out a glass, and then shattered it in the sink. With the cup in so many pieces, he wasn't surprised to see that his hand was bleeding. Eggsy made a terrible noise in his throat and then started to bounce his way across the kitchen. 

"Don't. I'm alright," Harry said. 

“You're bleeding, though." Eggsy responded. "You got a first aid box?"

“Under the sink,” Harry said.

“Alright. Come on. To the loo with you."

"We can do it here," Harry tried.

"You really wanna hop up on the counter? Move your arse, Mister."

Harry let Eggsy walk him to the bathroom and he wasn't sure how he felt about Eggsy's hand on the small of his back. It felt good to be looked after, but it felt like shit to lose your confidence over a statement made in passing. Harry was still thinking about Dean when he took a seat on the toilet lid. 

"Does he hurt you?"

"Not often enough to make a big deal about it," Eggsy laughed. Harry couldn't believe that he even let out the sound. "Is that why you threw a fit?"

"I didn't throw a fit."

"If you're gonna lie, at least do it about something I didn't see, yeah?"

"Of course." Harry said.

Eggsy paused in his cleaning and rubbed Harry's thigh comfortingly. Then he gave the muscle a squeeze and said, "Don’t break no more cups. They’re worth more than me head.”

"That's not true," Harry told him immediately. "And I want you to stop speaking so badly about yourself because none of what you've said is true."

Eggsy patched Harry up carefully. He was gentle with the way he searched Harry's hand for splinters, and then how when he didn't find any, he began to clean any lacerations. His eyes were wide and he was focused, biting his lip and kneeling politely in front of Harry to help clean him up. Harry tried not to look at Eggsy too closely because all it would take for them to meet each other's eyes would be for Eggsy to look up once, but the boy never did it and Harry found himself staring at Eggsy's face, trying to memorize what he looked like before the boy left him.

He needed to talk to someone. Anyone, really. Merlin. Tilde. Somebody who could understand how frustrated he was to let Eggsy go back. Before the boy packed his satchel and hopped a cab back to the Black Prince, Harry took him to the park as a thank you for fixing his hand, and Eggsy spent an hour telling him about things that he wished he could spend the day doing instead of sitting in a basement, waiting for someone to go to his room. Harry listened to him and internalized everything he said. Part of it was his job, but the other part was a combination of morbid curiosity, and a collection of justifications when he finally got his hands on Dean's neck and snapped it.

There wasn't anything than putting Eggsy back in a cab to send him back. 

Eggsy's car had hardly pulled off when Harry was pulling out his phone. He dialed Merlin's number and stumbled his way back to his apartment, forlorn and angry. 

Merlin picked up the phone and his voice sounded clearly over the line, “Henry. Are you alright?”

"Merlin, this won't work."

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a three day limit on the workers. What protocol do I follow to ensure his safety if he isn’t with me?”

Harry thought about Eggsy driving back to the Black Prince and what happened when he walked back through the doors. He'd been gone for a few days and a lot could have happened in that time to frustrate Dean. Harry's job was to keep Eggsy safe, but how was that possible if he didn't even have any discreet way to contact or access the boy? Anything could have been happening to him while he wasn't at Grosvenor.

“Visit them. See if you can work out a deal. I'll speak to Natasha about the situation and see what we can get you,” Merlin starts. “I'm sorry Henry. It's stressful, I know. If you suspect that Eggsy's life is in danger, you can work within your responsibilities but, please, for the love of god - don't blow an operation because you're upset. Be reasonable and step in when you're sure it won't put every other victim at risk."

“For Christ’s _sake_ Merlin, he’s a prostitute!” Harry yelled. It was loud enough for Harry to reel back from it, apologetic that he'd done it in the first place, and with a clearer head he said, "I’m sitting here with an impossible objective. He’s not safe. We _have to_ remove him.”

Merlin sighed and then the line was quiet. Harry walked himself to his bedroom and took a seat on the corner of the mattress, staring at the blank television. He could see his own reflection on the screen and was surprised that he still looked, and talked, very much like Harry. He hadn't become much of a Henry at all, other than the ID's and the work schedule. He wanted to go back. He was sick to death of the entire case and it had only been three days. Harry couldn't stand the thought of what had happened to Lee's boy. Harry sniffed and then sobbed. It was too much. He wasn't prepared for this, not like he'd thought he was.

"Harry," Merlin said. "I don't like the idea of leaving them there either. Not without permanent supervision. But there are always things we have to weigh. Do we retrieve these kids at the expense of another 40? 50? 70? We made that choice to try and dig a bit deeper. It's hard. What they gave you in preparation never would have been enough for you to see Gary in person. He was dead. We'd all killed him in our heads, and then there he was."

"How could this have happened?" Harry asked.

"I don't know, and neither do you. Let's just do what we can to fix it. Pull yourself together for a bit longer. I promise you, it'll be over soon."

Merlin was good at reassurance. Harry trusted him more than any other friend he'd ever had. He was a confident and competent, middle-aged man who was by choice, completely dedicated to his work. Harry said goodbye in a way that unsettled both of them - completely depressed by a situation that neither really had much control over. Merlin wished him well before they disconnected the call, and Harry just stared at the screen long after the 'call ended' announcement faded to his home screen.

On a whim, Harry opened his messages and pulled up Chuck's number, nose still running and eyes still red. He sent the boy a message:

“ _Chuck. If you’re free tonight and wouldn’t mind the company, please meet me at the chippie I took you to last time. It’s on me.”_

And thirty seconds later, the response read, _“Cheers, Henry. I thought you’d never ask. xxx”_

" _Give me an hour."_ Harry texted.

_"The hour is yours."  
_

Harry cleaned himself up. He rubbed some life back into his face and changed clothes. Equipped with his wallet and the large Kingsman issued umbrella, he went out onto the streets of London to meet Chuck. He had a small plan forming. It was just data mining, but hopefully mining that turned out to be something good in terms of a location for the other buildings. If Chuck didn't know the whereabouts of Dean's (or Dean's coworkers) whorehouses, then Harry would have to go and visit the Black Prince again himself and chum up to the others.  

Harry walked to the Chippie and was surprised to find Chuck waiting for him right outside. He was standing against the glass of the shop window, cool and relaxed.

“It’s closed.” He said. 

Harry frowned and said honestly, "I wonder why."

Chuck offered Harry his wrist and tapped the face of his watch. It was just after 10 PM. Harry looked up at the hours on the shop door and made an 'ah' noise of recognition when he saw it.

"I could come to yours, but I'd have to charge you," Chuck laughed.

"How about the pub? Is it still open?"

"You wanna go there?" Chuck asked, surprised. Harry had just spent three days hosting one of their men and the first thing he does after shipping him off is go  _back_ to the pub for seconds. Harry knew what it looked like. Desperate and actually quite embarrassing. 

"I'm quite lonely. I'd just like to talk to you."

Chuck considered him for a moment and then jabbed his head in the direction behind him. "Come on."

"I'll pay for the cab," Harry offered. 

The car ride to the Black Prince was comfortably quiet. Chuck went between looking out of the window and making small talk, and Harry responded politely to each inquiry about why they were meeting, but didn't answer. He only wanted to ask Chuck questions about his job, but wasn't sure if it was safe to ask those sorts of things at the pub. Having Gaz overhear wasn't something he wanted to chance, and it was unlikely that Chuck would look anything into the questions without being guided by his bosses into doing so. Henry was an innocent old man. Atleast Chuck looked like he believed it.

Luckily there weren't many customers at the Black Prince. Two at the bar, three at a table in the corner of the room. Chuck walked in and nodded to the bartender, and then he said, "Any particular place you wanted to sit?"

"Your choice," Harry said kindly. Chuck put his hand on the small of Harry's back and guided him to one of the tables that was out of the way, next to the loo.

“I apologize," Harry said as he took a seat. Already, there was a server walking her way to their table with glasses of water. "I should have checked the time first. This is... likely an inconvenience for you."

"Not at all," Chuck said. He looked pleased with himself, and Harry noticed he had pulled out his phone and was typing quickly on it. When he was done with his message, he kept the phone open in front of him but looked back up at Harry and said, "Was there any particular reason you wanted to treat me?"

"...yes, but," Harry started. He was too nervous to ask now and with Chuck on the phone, it didn't seem like the right time to start digging into the boys personal life. He should have planned better for this. Situations like these were the exact reason that Harry never let himself feel emotions too deeply - he made spectacularly stupid decisions and ended up in very awkward situations. He lied, "I wanted to see you, that's all."

“You just wanted to see me?"

Harry wanted to backtrack and say that there was more, but that he didn't want to bring it up now, but over Chuck's shoulder there was the violent movement of a door being swung open, and then Eggsy was tromping his way out from behind it. Harry swallowed and went stiff in his seat. Eggsy looked upset and with the way he was approaching their table, was ready to make some very bad choices. 

“Eggsy," Harry mumbled. 

Chuck turned around and upon seeing Eggsy, sighed. "Oh, he'll be alright. He doesn't like for people to covet what little interested parties he gets."

Harry couldn't have ignored him if he tried. The boy was two steps away from their table. Harry shrunk down into his seat and looked up at Eggsy nervously. "E-eggsy, my dear. What brings you out here?"

“I won’t get myself in trouble over this,” Eggsy said immediately. His voice was wavering and his voice was cracking. He was wearing a plain black shirt and an old pair of jeans, so he'd changed since Harry sent him off earlier, but he was also wearing an apron and so Harry thought that might've been for practical purposes. Harry was about to speak again before Eggsy could continue, but Eggsy said, "Just wanted to say  _fuck both of you_." 

"Just a moment, Eggsy. Don't be upset with me, I'm-" Harry begged. He was more scared than anything to upset Eggsy, and he wasn't sure why but he couldn't allow the boy to leave in anger because of something he'd done. It was too early in the mission for Eggsy to not like him. 

“Oh leave it,” Chuck suggested. He rested his elbow on the table and leaned into it, facing Eggsy with an apparent attitude. "Eggsy, you really will get in trouble. Go back downstairs."

“Charlie, you fucking messaged me.” Eggsy spat at him. His voice was so much deeper now that he was angry. 

“Did I?”

Harry cleared his throat and said, "Eggsy, could I speak to you for just a moment?"

“No!” Eggsy yelled at him. He seemed to be startled by his own response, and nervously looked over his shoulder before turning back to the two of them and saying, "I wasn't good enough for you?" 

“You're not good enough for anyone," Chuck snapped. He sat back upright and continued, "Look at the way you act when someone who  _buys you_ decides to take someone else for a spin. For some reason, you seem to be forgetting who you are. You're making a scene, Dean's not gonna be happy, and this happens all the fucking time. Do  you think someone actually wants to deal with a prostitute like that? Not bloody likely. That's why he's here with me."

"That's not true," Harry interjected fiercely. He had no intention of  upsetting Chuck either, but he was beginning to gather why Eggsy was the way he was. Who needed someone telling them what a joke of a prostitute they were? Who needed someone reminding them they were a prostitute in the first place? He was a bit irritated by Chuck even mentioning any of it out here in public. It wasn't that Eggsy had given them much choice - the situation needed to be addressed, but what Chuck had said seemed slightly malicious. “It seems I’ve overstepped some boundary and I’d like to apologize to Eggsy. I want to do it in private. Chuck, I'm sorry that I called you here because it seems that I've become quite a nuisance, but if you could excuse me for a moment, I'd like to talk to Eggsy alone."

"You ain't gotta do it now. Finish here," Eggsy said.

"I want to apologize now." Harry tried again.

Eggsy scratched the back of his head and then nodded his head over his shoulder. Harry stumbled up out of his seat, apologized again to Chuck and grabbed wildly around in his pocket for his wallet so that he could leave Chuck a tip for what little time they'd spent together, and then he followed Eggsy to the back of the pub, out the door, and into the same alleyway that Harry had dropped his payment off in so many days ago. 

Harry didn't waste any time. He said, "Why are you so upset with me? Is this something that I shouldn't be doing? Meeting with the others..."

"No, it's not that!" Eggsy said. "I just... I'm sorry. It's me. Charlie - no, Chuck messaged me and he said... it don't matter."

"It does matter."

"Did he suck you off?"

"No. Did he tell you I did."

"Yeah," Eggsy said. He rubbed his forehead and then looked down at his feet. He kicked a small stone in Harry's direction. " _Fucking_ Charlie."

"He sounds like quite the menace." Harry said. "I thought I made it clear to you that our lack of sexual contact wasn't a problem with you. I won't be having sex with any of you."

Eggsy looked up at him sadly. He didn't look well. He'd left Harry's company much brighter than he was at the moment, and Harry was so sorry for whatever misunderstanding had made him this way. He watched Eggsy fold his arms over his chest and then go to crouch down by the wall of the building, just resting and thinking. After a minute, Eggsy said, "It's always me, innit. Something don't ever feel right and it's always me that... that's the problem. So, that's why I thought..."

"No," Harry started. It's as far as he got in his rebuttal before the back door of the pub swung open so violently that it hit the wall behind them. Harry startled and Eggsy jumped up, almost tripping over himself in his haste to stand.

Even if Harry had never seen Dean’s picture in training and preparation, he’d have know without a doubt that the old, listless, disgusting man that stumbled out from behind that door was him. He was dirty, but held himself like he had authority, if not over one of the men in the alley with him, at least the other. He looked at Eggsy and raised his hand, crooking his finger at Eggsy like a dog, and then he said from low in his throat, "You get your arse over here before I wring your fuckin’ neck.”

"Shit," Eggsy breathed. He wiped his hands on his apron and then moved around Harry to go back towards the door.

In no universe would it have been okay for Harry to let him go. He reached out and (quite violently) yanked Eggsy back towards him, moving around him so that he could put more space between Dean and the boy. 

"Are you the owner here?" Harry asked politely. 

" _Harry, I gotta go,_ " Eggsy hissed into his ear. " _Really, I'm already up shit creek - this ain't helping._ "

"Yeah. Who the fuck are you?" Dean asked.

"A customer," Harry introduced himself. "Who's willing to pay quite a lot for this boy, and who's hoping that you're not out here to mistreat him."

"You the customer that this pile of shit stole from my boy?"

"Your boy?" Harry asked. 

“Tell Chuck I said to fuck _right_ off, could you?” Eggsy yelled from over Harry's shoulder. Harry reached behind himself and lightly tapped Eggsy's hip to get him to stop talking. 

"There seems to be some mistake, and I hope I can clear it up. I came here with Chuck, and I paid for his time. My intention was never to mislead him into thinking that I no longer wanted Eggsy's company. I'm sorry that this happened, but Eggsy isn't at fault here."

Harry really looked at Dean then. The longer he stood within a few feet of him, the more he smelled the metabolizing alcohol, the grease in the mans hair. He could see that Dean's clothes were old and stained, and he had a tremor in his hand when he spoke. It could have been the anger or the alcohol that did it, but either way, there wasn't any way that Harry could allow Eggsy to be alone with him. He thought quickly while Dean said, “I think the only mistake here is that you called this one. Biggest fuckin’ mistake if you ask me." He pointed at Eggsy again and said, "Take your arse inside before I have it shipped there in a pine box. You,” He said, looking at Harry, “What's your name."

“Henry Devere.”

“Right. I knows you, and what you done for this piece of shit is already too much. We got lots of product that don't talk back.”

"He hasn't talked back to me," Harry said. He took a step back and pushed Eggsy back with him. "And I'd like to request his company again shortly. Price is negotiable. I'm more than willing to pay for him."

That seemed to give Dean pause. He peered over Harry's shoulder and looked at Eggsy curiously, and then he looked back at Henry and said, "He got two customers coming tonight, but you and me can negotiate. Maybe set some sort of schedule up."

Harry nodded his head, pleased with the outcome of a situation that he was  _sure_ was going to amount to violence. Behind him, he'd hardly noticed that Eggsy had latched onto his coat and was standing right up against his back, watching as Dean huffed loudly and walked himself back inside. He felt as if he'd either just made a mistake, or a very good decision. Either way, he turned around and offered his hand to Eggsy, who took it quickly. It was as much for reassurance as it was to keep the boy from running off before he had to.

 

* * *

 

Dean was a man who liked money.

He was more than happy to offer Harry a payment plan for Eggsy because "the boy brings good traffic through here, but ain't worth much more then ten minutes or so."

Harry couldn't believe that there were people who disliked Eggsy. The boy had been saddled with any quick business that needed to be done, which was completely unfathomable. Harry had been won over by the boy's personality by the end of the first day - he wondered what everyone else saw in Eggsy that they refused to pay to keep him for longer than ten minutes. 

Harry readily signed paper after paper. He tried not to think about what Eggsy was doing next door, because against every baseline manner of tact that Harry had assumed Dean would use, he had put Eggsy to work in the neighbouring room. Harry had quite selective hearing, but he was hyper aware of every muffled sound he heard through the wall, and midway through signing his name on a sheet of donations, he heard a large thump, followed by Eggsy's irritated voice saying, "fuck off, mate."

Harry looked up at Dean and the man was cleaning his fingernails. The office was dead silent for a minute.

Then there were sounds. Aggressive sounds of someone being hurt, someone struggling with  _something_. Harry's heart crawled up into his throat and he said, "What is that?"

"What?"

"That noise?"

"I warned you. Boys got a mouth on him."

Harry couldn't listen to it. It was a large part of his job to keep Eggsy safe, and there was an assault happening in the other room. It was clear now, the sound of furniture being bumped into walls and the irritated calls of Eggsy struggling with some pursuant. Dean was sitting in front of him, unworried. Harry jumped up out of his seat. "Am I not paying for these goods? They should be undamaged," Harry tried. He wanted to stay civil, but he was giving Dean one more response to call of the aggressor in the other room before he left and did it himself. He loomed over Dean's desk. "You have the balls to damage the goods  _I'm purchasing_ while I'm in the next room."

"I know that customer. He won't hurt him, really,"

Harry growled and yanked a pencil out of Dean's cup holder, turning around and moving quickly to the door. He had pulled the door open before Dean actually got out of his seat and realized that something was going to happen.

"Oye," Dean yelled. 

Harry was in the hallway for only a second before he tried the handle of the room he knew Eggsy to be in. Not so shockingly, it was unlocked. Harry let himself in.

Eggsy was in the corner of the room with a hammer, waving it wildly in the direction of an older man who looked like he was trying to find ways to approach. He was missing his clothing with the exception of his socks, but Eggsy was still fully dressed, backwards cap and all. The room was a sty.

"Eggsy," Harry called from the doorway.

"Oh, shit," Eggsy croaked back. 

The man hadn't been expecting Harry's presence. He turned and looked at Harry curiously, and then he exploded, cursing and spitting in Harry's direction, "This waste of fucking money, piece of shit, jack off-"

And Harry ignored him and waved Eggsy to him, fully prepared to beat the man if his verbal assault returned to his earlier, more physical demonstrations.

"And you fucking, fucking -" The man hissed as Eggsy danced by him, hammer still at the ready. Harry took it gently from his hand when they were within arms reach of each other.

"Don't irritate me," Harry warned the man. "Get dressed and go home. Eggsy, are you alright?"

"Well yeah, he didn't do nothing. I hit him with the hammer."

"Go and grab your things. You're coming back with me."

"I just left this morning," Eggsy reminded him. "I can't come back just yet."

"You can and you will. Go and grab your things, please."

Eggsy was curious. His eyes said as much, but Harry didn't have much time to explain right now. He turned back towards Dean's office where the man was standing in the doorway looking livid. Harry didn't care. He'd just signed off on the boy and he wouldn't be taking no for an answer. Any paying customer would have expected the same - there was nothing suspicious about his sudden irritation.

"I've just signed you a check for 30,000 pounds. When I leave, that boy will be coming with me, or you'll be shredding my check."

Dean hesitated to respond. In his mind, Harry could see him weighing the money in a basket, and then weighing his pride in another. As expected, he said, "Take him. He's all yours." 

Harry didn't believe that for a second, but he nodded his head and followed Eggsy back down the hall.

 

* * *

 

Harry waited until him and Eggsy were in another taxi to try and explain, but Eggsy put a hand up and said, "Don't wanna know, bruv. You're weird. I get it."

"It's more than that," Harry told him. "But there's... I'm sorry. I am strange." 

"But you're fit, too," Eggsy whispered to him, nudging Harry in his thigh and then smiling at him. Harry nudged him back.

"I appreciate the compliment." Harry said. "So thank you."

“Sure thing, Haz.”

Harry froze in his seat. There was a moment when he thought that he'd misheard what Eggsy had just called him, and in that moment he asked the boy, "What did you just say?"

"Sure thing."

"Sure thing..."

"Haz." 

Harry turned fully in his seat and looked Eggsy in his eyes. He said, "Why did you call me that?"

And Eggsy shifted in his seat a little, putting just a bit more space between them. 

“Rox called you that so it’s rubbed off on me. Why? What's wrong..."

Harry could count on one hand the amount of names that took the nickname 'Haz', and he refused to believe that it was coincidence that one of those was 'Harry' and not 'Henry'. His composure began to dissolve to absolutely nothing. He'd been an undercover agent for approximately two weeks, and of those two weeks only three of those days had been in the company of the victims. Yet somehow, he'd already been noticed as Harry Hart, senior detective. He'd already made a mistake. 

"You alright, Henry?"

Harry reached out and grabbed Eggsy's thigh tightly. His chest felt tight and he couldn't breathe properly. All at once, it felt as if he'd been doused in cold water and the shock was taking over his system and his heart was pumping out enough blood to make him dizzy. He said, "Oh no. I god, no." It'd been so long since he'd panicked, even longer since it'd been over the boy that was sitting beside him. Harry dropped his head and hunched his back and tried to pull himself back from the brink of his anxiety. 

“ _Henry,_  Shit.” Eggsy unbuckled his seatbelt and scooted as close as he could go, bending his face to get a good look at Harry. "Are you wigging out, love?"

Harry wanted to say no. He opened his mouth and out come a chocked off, disgusting sound that was more embarrassing than anything.

“Hey, you’re okay. It's alright. You're just having a moment." 

"Please help me," Harry said, squeezing Eggsy's thigh more tightly. Eggsy carefully removed Harry's hand and held onto it instead, likely trying to avoid the bruising.

"What do I do for you?" 

"I need -" Harry started. Merlin's name was on the tip of his tongue but he wasn't allowed to say it. There were few people in London with that name, and all it would take is for Eggsy to go looking and he'd find everything. Harry bit his tongue and made another frustrated noise. "Just talk to me."

"Yeah, alright. We can talk about... the weather."

Lovely, Harry thought. Anything to keep him from thinking that none of this was going to work, and Eggsy wasn't ever going to be saved.

By the time they pulled up in front of Grosvenor, Harry had relaxed. He was exhausted, but he was calm. It took Eggsy gently cupping his chin and turning him towards the building for him to even noticed they'd arrived, and he fumbled around in his pocket for his wallet to pay the cabbie. Eggsy watched him quietly for a moment before helping him out and taking it for him. He offered the driver a tip, too, before pocketing Harry's wallet and then coaxing him out of the vehicle. Eggsy wrapped an arm around Harry's waist and helped him to the door, and Harry thought that it was strange to have someone so much shorter helping him in - usually Merlin was responsible for dragging a dead-weight Harry to his front door.

“I apologize Eggsy.” Harry grumbled quietly. “That hasn't happened in ages. It's been quite a week for me."

“Is it coz of me?" Eggsy asked.

“It's because of you, yes, but it isn't your fault. I promise."

Eggsy dragged Harry past the front counter and apologized to the worker who raised her eyebrows at them, and then somehow he managed to get Harry back upstairs and into his penthouse. The first thing he did was lock them in, and then he slowly untangled Harry from around him and let him go. Harry was weak, but he could move enough. He kicked off his shoes and then slowly undid his coat, and when he looked up Eggsy was already running off to the bathroom.

"Can I run you a bath?"

"If you'd be so kind," Harry responded. "I need a drink."

"Water," Eggsy suggested. "It's not good to drink alcohol when you've just spazzed out."

Harry hadn't planned on drinking anything alcoholic anyway. He couldn't have stomached it, not with the thoughts of Roxanne Morton fresh on his mind. She had been the most recent victim, obviously, and perhaps it had been an oversight to assume she wouldn't know what her local servicemen looked like. She was an intelligent young woman if one look at Harry for the span of two seconds had set her off to who Eggsy had been spending time with. He still worried that perhaps her knowledge of him might ruin their goals - but she hadn't told Eggsy anything, it seemed. He wasn't asking questions and he certainly was confused by Harry's reaction in the taxi. Harry still had to call the Met and tell them. He still had to admit that somewhere along the way, one of them fucked up, and they'd done so in a very small amount of time.

When he got back to the bathroom, Eggsy had filled the tub. The bubbles were blue and they smelled like fruit, and Harry sighed and took a seat on the toilet. 

"Thank you for this, Eggsy," Harry said.

No, thank you Henry." Eggsy told him. "I got... well, I'm much better off here tonight, so. Clothes off." 

Harry sighed and said, "I don't -"

“Think it’s a good idea?” Eggsy finished for him. He looked over at Harry with his most exhausted facial expression and said, “Save it, mate. I’ve seen enough cock in my life. One more won't hurt. ”

"Yes, but it's my cock. And that's different. For me."

Eggsy just blinked at him curiously. Then he said, “Why can’t I just help you? This ain't a sexual thing. I'm not interested in touching you. I just don't wanna leave you alone."

Harry didn't want to think badly of himself. He didn't want to take advantage of Eggsy's kindness and push them into an awkward situation. Still, Eggsy looked very adamant that Harry shouldn't be left alone, and Harry couldn't find any rules that a bit of company was breaking. As long as Eggsy and Harry kept their hands to themselves, there wasn't anything inherently bad about a young man wanting to take care of an older friend. Or not friend, dare he say, but a customer. It was for peace of mind. A large part of Harry didn't want to be alone either.

Harry undressed quickly. He folded his clothes and laid them on the counter, and when he went to step in the water, Eggsy was looking away politely. 

“See? Not so bad.” Eggsy says. "I didn't even peek."

Sliding into the water was like sliding into a bathtub full of morphine. The mental stress and aches of the day were slowly replaced by the feeling of warm water on his skin, the scent of fruit in his nose, the feeling of Eggsy's fingers running through his hair. It was the only thing worth any money in the entire damn penthouse, and as Harry leaned back and further into the water, he felt like he could have survived living here his entire life if it were spent in the bath.

"That's the sound of a happy man," Eggsy commented offhandedly. He ran his fingers through Harry's hair a few more times and then stood up to collect the man's things from around the bathroom.

Harry lost track of time. The moment he let himself fully relax was the same moment that almost half an hour passed, and before he knew what was happening Eggsy had sat himself back on the edge of the bathtub, and was coaxing Harry forward so that he could wash his back. Harry was docile. He moved wherever Eggsy put him, enjoying the attention and completely unaware that there weren't any bubbles left in the bathtub at all, and the act of having your back washed by someone else was also a very erotic thing. He'd never allowed anyone else to bathe him.

“So what happened? On the way back, I mean," Eggsy asked him.

"I don't know," Harry slurred. "Personal issues."

"There's no way you don't know. Should I not call you H-A-Z anymore?"

Harry laughed quietly. He pulled his knees up to his chest and then rested on them. He was quite limber in his old age, and didn't feel the least bit shy about it. “I don’t think H-A-Z is an appropriate nickname for someone called Henry. Perhaps you should find another one.”

“You don’t look like a Henry.” Eggsy told him. He dipped the cloth in the water and ran it over Harry's back again. “You look like a… Jerry. Do I look like an Eggsy?"

Harry smiled. He wanted to say, 'No, you look like a Gary,' - but he wasn't that far gone. Instead he said, "Do you feel like an Eggsy?"

"Yeah." Eggsy said. "I quite like my name, but it's a bit weird innit?"

When Harry opened his eyes, Eggsy was staring at him. He closed them slowly and went back to his happy place. "Just a tad. But you're a tad strange, too, so perhaps it fits."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you." 

The remainder of the evening was a blur. Eggsy helped Harry come out of the bathtub, and he helped him into a fluffy robe, and then he helped him back to his own bedroom and got him tucked in. Eggsy chose a movie (Pretty Woman of all things) and then took his own bath, and Harry assumed the boy climbed into bed with him afterwards because he was drifting peacefully between being awake and dropping off into the deep beyond that was the unconscious. It wasn't until hours later, when Eggsy was curled up against his side and television had gone to sleep from lack of use, that Harry woke up and remembered to call Merlin. It was absolutely necessary. It was 4:00 in the morning and Eggsy wouldn't have woken up. There was no better time to do it. 

Harry carefully slipped out of bed and snuck off to the bathroom.

When Harry called Merlin, the man answered, but sounded very tired. He said, "Henry," in the soothing, deep voice of his.

“I’m concerned that my cover’s been compromised," Harry told him.

There was a distinct rustling noise, and then Merlin said, “What?”

"Eggsy told me that Roxanne calls me "Haz". I think she knows who I am. When I first met her I... she looked at me in a very familiar way. I can't recall ever meeting her, but there is something about her."

Merlin made a soft, frustrated noise and then said, “I’m not technically your handler. I’ll have to give Natasha a call tomorrow. Between now and then, tread carefully. Where is Eggsy?”

Harry hesitated and then said, “In my bed.”

“... _Christ._ ”

“The boy has attachment issues. He can’t stand to be left alone. It's nothing more than that."

"It's a compromising position," Merlin said. "It's not more than that to you, but to Eggsy I can assure you it's not a simple case of sleeping."

"I know."

"Harry, don't..." Merlin started. Then he shut himself up.

"Don't?"

"No. It's nothing. Just get some rest. I'll be in touch tomorrow."

Harry thanked Merlin and bid him adieu, and then he hung up the phone and cleared the call log in case Eggsy decided to go snooping. He hadn't been interested in Harry's things since the first night, but it was a precaution. After tightening his robe back up, Harry went back to his bedroom and crawled up onto his mattress, snuggling himself back into his earlier position. It didn't take him long to fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

London isn't a big place. Harry fully expected to run into Merlin at some point or another - and he never expected it to be a coincidence. It was shocking that he hadn't gotten a heads up first, that was all.

Harry had taken Eggsy to work so that the boy wouldn't have to be left alone. Lucas loved him and so it was an easy day in the office, filling orders and showing Eggsy how to tailor clothing. Eggsy loved it - his eyes were on everything he could touch, soaking in the experience of messing with someone else's clothes. When the door chimed, none of them were paying much attention to the new customer, but Lucas perked up and said, "Good morning! Welcome to Kingsman."

“Morning. I’m looking for a Henry Devere.”

Harry would know Merlin’s voice anywhere. You could likely stick him in a room, blindfolded and delirious and he would still know with certainty when Merlin were talking. To hear him after weeks of not _really_ hearing him is was blessing, but then the reality kicked in that the man shouldn't have been here and Harry grew anxious. 

“That would be me. Is there something I can help you with?"

“Yes. My name is Walter Munroe and I’m with the Special Crimes and Operations branch of the Metropolitan Police Service. I’d like to ask if I might borrow you for a moment of your time.”

Lucas stiffened and Eggsy about lost any colour to his face. Harry looked over at both of them, panicked. How could Merlin have done this to him? How the fuck was he going to explain his way out of this one. He looked back at Merlin fiercely and said, "Yes but what exactly is going on?"

“I’ll need for you to come with me. We can talk on the way to the office."

Harry looked over at Eggsy and said, "I have company. Might I take him back home first?"

"We can drive the both of you," Merlin said clearly. He nodded his head. "I'll wait out front for you to gather your things."

Something had happened. Whatever it was, Harry couldn't have guessed. Perhaps it had something to do with Roxanne figuring him out, or perhaps there was something more dangerous at work. Eggsy nervously slunk into one of the back rooms and Harry thanked Merlin quickly before following him. 

Eggsy was panicking. Harry walked into the dressing room and Eggsy was shoving himself into his hoodie.

“Eggsy,” He said. “Have you gotten everything?”

“I didn’t bring much.” Eggsy responded. When his head popped through his hoodie, he breathed, “Henry, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come the fuck on," Eggsy hissed at him. The change in attitude was sudden and so, so noticeable. It was alright though, because Eggsy was clearly scared and that's how people acted when they were scared. “Folks like you don’t wind up in jail so you don’t have to know. Not really. But the rest of us…” Eggsy stopped himself and said, "You grassed me up."

“What?”

“You fucking told on me. You - you... you're a fucking fed.” He looked mortified, falling back onto one of the seats in the room. He yelled, “Tell me, Henry! What did you do?”

“We can’t talk about this here," Harry told him. 

“No! No! Cos I’ll be in jail before you ever have to fucking answer me, so tell me!”

“Eggsy, stop-”

“ _Fuck_ you. I know what I do ain’t right!” Eggsy screams at him. “But you - you... fucking _snitch_.”

Harry felt sick with himself. He was such a liar, and Eggsy was panicking. He knew that to some extent, Harry was a liar. Harry had to convince him to relax or they weren't going to get out of this shop in one piece. He went over to Eggsy and yanked him up out of the seat, holding him by his arms and shaking him.

"Listen to me. You are  _not_ in trouble. Nobody is coming for you. You have to relax." Eggsy's eyes were watering and Harry felt like shit. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a square, handing it over. "Wipe your eyes, Eggsy. I'm going to take you back to Grosvenor. When I return from the station, we'll talk. Until then, please trust me. Nobody is going to take you anywhere you don't want to go, is that clear?"

Eggsy looked at Harry longingly, and then decided to take the out. He mumbled, "Yeah."

Because Eggsy didn't have much of a choice, and no matter how Harry described the next series of events, they were all still in deep shit. Eggsy especially.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I extended this to four chapters because there's quite a bit more left to do. The biggest thing is that I wanted to update this before I get started on the Hartwin Secret Santa thing because I assume it'll take me a little longer to update afterwards. For the curious, Grosvenor is a real penthouse for rent in London. Check it out if you’re loaded, or check it out if you’re curious to see how Harry is living! I really could have put him in a smaller one but nah! Let him live the crazy rich life with his egg. Not brit-picked (at all) though I tried to keep it believably close. Come visit me at litindecency.tumblr.com if you'd like to say hi!  
> https://www.jumeirah.com/en/hotels-resorts/london/grosvenor-house-suites/apartments-and-suites/grosvenor-penthouse/


	3. Woke up in...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some mentions of dubious consent and anxiety.

Harry was surprised to find that interrogation rooms looked different from the other side of the table.

Perhaps it was merely a matter of perspective.

The idea that he was there as a ‘perpetrator’ rather than a detective certainly clouded his judgement, and when Merlin came into the room and threw something heavy on the desk between them, his body went tense and jumped in his seat.

"I'm sorry," Merlin apologized quickly. 

"It's alright. Likely a habit." Harry said, brushing it off. He was already reaching for the folder - Amelia Staunton's - thick with evidence and witness recollections of her life before she'd been taken. Harry had breezed through her case file to gain more context, but he hadn't memorized the smaller details like he had for Eggsy's case. The fact that Merlin had bought him this folder meant something.

"Amelia."

"She died last night, Harry," Merlin told him.

“What?” Harry asked. For a moment, he had the dull optimism that he'd overheard, and that what Merlin had said was some kind of mistake. Amelia couldn't have been dead, surely. 

"Digby was also killed. Gun shot wound. It was very quick. And Roxanne Morton is missing."

“Wait, please,” Harry begged, closing the folder and looking up at Merlin desperately. “Amelia Staunton and Digby Barker are dead. How can they be dead? They had detail.”

Merlin hesitated to answer, and when Harry told him irritatedly to spit it out, he said, "They were both executed this morning. We're not sure what happened. Their detail wasn't available. We were considering pulling the remaining victims out - but Roxanne has gone missing and Chuck was involved in the murder. Things have gotten a bit more sticky, and I'm afraid...”

Harry made a soft, broken noise in the back of his throat. Whatever he’d thought Merlin was going to tell him when he’d gotten here, this certainly wasn’t it. He expected to hear that he was being pulled out, that they were taking other channels to save the young men and women, that maybe they needed to cut back on their inquiries. Not that two of the victims had been taken out by a third victim, and the remaining one was nowhere to be found. He took off his glasses and lay them gently on the table in front of him before resting his elbows on the table and bowing his head. "It was me, wasn't it?" He asked quietly.

"We don't know that. It's better not to assume."

"It was  _me_ , Merlin," Harry growled. "She knew it was me the moment I walked through the door. The entire operation was fucked from the start."

"We didn't know," Merlin started. It was true that they hadn't guessed that young woman kidnapped could have been so detailed about the people of London. Not many people paid attention to their servicemen. "And we shouldn't have rushed in."

Eggsy was going to be broken. Harry had promised that nothing was wrong, and he couldn't go back to Grosvenor and act like Digby and Amerlia weren't dead. He couldn't allow Eggsy to return to the Black Prince. He was sick thinking about what would have happened to the boy if he'd been left at the pub in the first place, and now Roxanne was gone on top of that and he was feeling like he'd fucked it all up. Two young people were dead because of his job. 

"Our case has changed, Harry. We have a lead because of the deaths. A terrified patron has given us the name 'Pavel Mikhailov'. This is a completely foreign name. We've run it through the system and found nothing. We can't even promise you it's a good lead - but it's all we've got to go on. 

“ _Pavel Mikhailov…_ ’ Harry mouthed. "What about Roxanne?"

“We've got every available resource we can spare looking for her,” Merlin assured him. "But we won't be able to find her without Eggsy's help. That's where you come in."

Harry placed his glasses back on his face and flipped open Amelia’s case a second time, sifting through the papers to get to the most recent logs of activity. He read through them line by line, up until yesterday’s date, hoping to avoid any grisly details, but then he traced the information with his finger until it landed on ‘precedence: urgent’ followed by a reference number and a set of details. The description of notes surrounding Amelia’s death were concise, and Harry read them because he couldn't stop. It was quick, at the very least, as gunshot wounds to the head often were. He couldn't look at any pictures. He was careful to feel around for any glossed over files that might be them.

“Pavel Mikhailov. Undetected and untraceable in federal database,” Merlin said.

“How can we not know."

"It's just a name. It's highly unlikely that Mikhailov is actually Mikhailov. For all we know, he might be Mr. Baker's grandad. That's why we need Eggsy. Without him, we know nothing."

Harry thought about Eggsy a second time. The boy was sitting at his flat and likely already terrified out of his wits. The last thing Harry had the confidence to do was waltz back in there and start asking questions. Harry had promised Eggsy... that everything would be alright, and it was so far from alright that Harry worried for how Eggsy would respond when he found out the truth. He closed Amelia's folder and slid it across the table. "I need time, Merlin."

"We don't have time."

"We  _have to_ have time or Eggsy won't make it out alive."

“I’ve never doubted your ability as an agent. I trust you completely, and every decision made regarding how you handle this case, I'll be behind. Just be aware that the case is sloppy and dangerous, and the longer we wait, the harder it is."

"I know." Harry said. "I'll do my best. I'm sorry I wasn't... that I couldn't..."

Merlin stuck a hand up to quiet him. He grabbed Amelia's folder off of the desk and cradled it against his chest as he stood up. He usually had a clipboard, but the motion was so familiar to Harry that he ignored the glaring red folder that was so unfamiliar, and instead focused on the way Merlin looked just holding it against his chest. 

"Tilde is coming, Harry. And then Natasha will be in. I hope all is well otherwise, and I look forward to having you back shortly."

"Thank you, Merlin," Harry said softly. He meant it. No matter how overwhelming the case seemed to be, even having Merlin in the same room as him made him feel as if they were doing what they could. The man's voice over his shoulder had tethered him to what he was before he had ever accepted this case. As easy as he'd walked into the room, Merlin walked out with nothing more than a soft look in return cast over his shoulder before the door closed between them. 

 

 

* * *

 

Eggsy was a resilient boy. He was much like a rubber band - pulled on all sides by the world and still managing to bounce back to form. Harry had an admiration for that sort of quality.

When Harry returned home, the lights were turned off, but evidence of Eggsy's presence was everywhere. His shoes were by the door, his satchel was hooked to the wall, his cap was on the counter in the doorway. The only thing that was missing from the scenario was Eggsy himself, and Harry had no doubt that if he walked to his bedroom the boy would be in there, sleeping off his stressful day. 

He removed his shoes and coat and put them away, and then he walked quietly to his room and nudged open his bedroom door. It was dark inside, courtesy of the curtains that Eggsy had drawn shut. He called out softly, "Eggsy, dear."

It took a moment for Harry's eyes to adjust, but when they did he could see Eggsy’s form sprawled out over the mattress like a starfish, asleep with his mouth wide open. Harry hadn't really noticed that Eggsy was a bedhog because he was a heavy sleeper when loud noises weren't involved. He had woken up once to Eggsy all over him, but that was it. He took a moment to appreciate how relaxed Eggsy looked now with his chest rising and falling in the deepness of sleep, and he thought that he had quite the job to do regarding the case, but fuck if he didn't  _actually_ want to just leave Eggsy alone about it. Eventually they had to talk, so Harry called Eggsy again before going over and nudging the boy's ankle. 

Eggsy rolled over and curled in on himself, and then muttered a bit of nonsense before dozing back off.

“Eggsy,” He tried again. "Wake up."

“Hmm.” The boy responded. 

“I need to speak with you."

Eggsy licked his lips and rolled over towards Harry, patting the bed space behind him to get Harry to join him on the mattress. Harry couldn't do that right now, so he reached out and rubbed Eggsy's back instead. It wasn't much more effective in waking him up, but it kept him from crawling up behind Eggsy and spooning him. That would've been highly inappropriate, after all.

“What?” Eggsy croaked. He finally opened his eyes and breathed out, "You alright, then?"

“I’m fine.” Harry told him.

“What about me? Am I alright?"

“You're fine." 

The bed looked mighty comfortable in his dark room. Harry cleared his throat and then sat on the corner of the bed. He wondered if he was getting too old and too comfortable in his job. He wanted to be placid and dozy like Eggsy was, just for a moment, so that he could get away from the stress of what he actually had to do. He couldn't become Henry to that extent, though. He was still Harry, and laying in bed with Eggsy wasn't something he wanted to rectify after the fact. One second with his groin up against Eggsy's backside and they'd have both been in trouble; him for a lack of willpower, Eggsy for the attitude he was likely to have at being taunted. 

"We don't gotta spoon. I know touching people makes you uncomfortable..." Eggsy said. "Just lay down for a bit."

Harry's stomach was in knots. He'd climbed into bed with Eggsy multiple times throughout the week, but this time felt different. It was probably the weight of his visit with Merlin. He was desperate for attention and feedback because he felt mentally on-edge. He wasn't to rights, and his brain was looking to Eggsy to fix that because Merlin and Tilde weren't an option. It was dangerous to latch on to a boy that he was supposed to be saving, and he knew that. But he layed back onto his mattress anyway, with his and Eggsy's bodies mere inches apart, and their eyes level with one another's while they rested. Eggsy smiled at him and stuck his tongue out, and Harry reached out and patted the boys cheek affectionately.

"I owe you an explanation," Harry told him quietly. "You're a very smart boy and so there's no use in lying."

"It's because of what I do."

"Yes," Harry said.

"And it's cause of  what you're doing."

"...yes. Do you know what I'm doing?"

"I don't care what you're doing. I'm happy with you." Eggsy said. "I've never met someone who broke a glass over me, and I know it's only been a few days, but I feel like I've known you for longer than that."

Harry thought the same. He pushed Eggsy's hair back off of his forehead. "I feel like I've known you for much longer, too." 

"Can I ask you something, though?"

Harry took a deep breath and lined up all of the currently outstanding questions that Eggsy had posed, wondering which one he was going to choose from. He said, "Yes. Of course."

"When you say you're not gonna fuck me, is it because you can't or because you won't?"

"Because I can't." Harry answered easily. He continued to run his fingers through Eggsy's hair. He didn't feel awkward about admitting that his and Eggsy's relationship couldn't have survived, not because of who Eggsy was as a person, but because of how Harry had met him. Harry would have been daft to say that Eggsy was anything other than attractive. He would have questioned anybody in the world who called Eggsy an unattractive young man - but it was wholly inappropriate for him to look further into Eggsy than that. He could admit when he met a beautiful human being. He couldn't ever admit that he wanted to fuck his coworkers son. Not that he had considered it before Eggsy asked the question. A few days ago, the thought hadn't even crossed his mind that if he'd met Eggsy under any other circumstances, he'd have taken the boy home. 

"Okay," Eggsy said. "Wish you'd atleast give us a kiss or something."

"Maybe someday," Harry lied.

"Okay."

The mission was sticky. But the mission had always been sticky, and Harry had adjusted out of necessity - sometimes in unhealthy ways. Harry was disgusted with himself as much as the case, maybe even more so now that he began to consider what would happen to Eggsy once he was free of Dean Baker, and running around London living a normal life. Would he visit Harry and say hello? Would he call Harry if he needed something? What kind of person would Eggsy allow to take him home after a night out with his normal friends? None of these were questions that needed answered now, but they were questions that Harry wanted answered for very selfish reasons. He was losing his mind and there was no way to stop it, because there wasn't anybody here to help him but Eggsy. 

Why did they let him become an undercover agent, again? Had they thought him responsible? Sound minded? Whatever it was, was wrong.

"I'm really happy you're making a suit for me," Eggsy said quietly, interrupting his thoughts. “I never went to school so I’m not good at much. If I ever quit, Dean said London would eat me up. Roxy don't think so, but she ain't been working long so atleast she's got something going for her. I wanna get a real job, and if you get me a suit, I could get me a job like that. Maybe. One day."

Harry said, "You're not going back to the Black Prince, Eggsy. The world will be your oyster soon enough."

“I ain’t got much choice.” Eggsy reminded him. “You paid but I ain’t yours.”

"You're nobody's but your own. Please remember that." As an aside, Harry said, "Haven't you ever seen Breakfast at Tiffany's?"

"People don't belong to people," Eggsy said in a terribly high and wispy mockery of the female voice. "I'll never let  _anyone_ put me in a cage!"

"Listen to Mrs. Audrey. She's an intelligent woman."

"That wasn't Audrey, though. That was Holly."

"Lula." Harry said.

"Both. Neither."

Eggsy smirked and chanced scooting forward. When Harry didn't back away or cause a commotion, Eggsy scooted all the way in and burrowed himself against Harry's chest, making himself comfortable. He had adjusted so that he was further down the bed, and so that Harry could hug him properly. It felt good to know that Eggsy liked him enough to do this, whatever it was. 

Harry had never thought of what he'd say to Eggsy if he ever saw him again, because he had never expected to see him again let alone hold onto him like this. But Eggsy had fallen back asleep before he got a chance to run it through in his mind, and within minutes the boy was snoring against his neck. Eggsy could sleep because he didn't know what had happened to Digby and Amelia, and he could sleep because he didn't know that he was on the precipice of a very dangerous transition. Harry thought of waking him back up, but then couldn't bring himself to do it. Not when the boy was so limited on comfort, and when their upcoming challenges seemed so very daunting.

He settled down too for a nap in the bed that belonged to neither of them. 

Harry overslept by a wide margin. When he woke next it was 3:00 in the morning, which meant that he'd been asleep since the afternoon before. 

The room was pitch black. The television was off. His body was sticky in it's clothing and room was too warm, and he was plastered against Eggsy's sweaty back with his arms still wrapped tightly around the boy's chest. . His clothes feel sticky on his body and it’s likely because he’s woken up still plastered against Eggsy’s back, arms wrapped tightly around his body. The sound of rustling sheets was Eggsy, nudging his backside against Harry’s body in a way that had surpassed suggestive and had dawdled right into dangerous territory. It took Harry a long minute to realize that his body had responded appropriately, and this his cock had gone stiff in his trousers, and was currently being pressed against the dip in the fabric of Eggsy's jeans.

“Eggsy.” Harry croaked softly, pulling away as much as he could. 

Eggsy sighed and tilted his head a little bit further into the sheets beneath his cheek. He tightened his arm around Harry's and held him still, scooting back a bit more and then pressing his arse right up against Harry's groin a second time. 

“No, Eggsy,” Harry said before gently prying Eggsy's fingers off of him. The boy wasn't lucid. He was deep in his sleep, likely dreaming about something that Harry had no business inquiring about. Harry looked down at the way Eggsy was rolling his hips and it was too sloppy to be purposely done. He felt for the embarrassment that Eggsy might feel if he woke up to see Harry gaping at him, and decided that it was perhaps a better idea to climb out of bed and let the boy finish his dreams in peace.

He tiptoed to the bathroom furthest away from his bedroom, and then he closed himself in and ran a lukewarm bath. He still had to change into his bedclothes, but what was more, he needed to relax. His mind was running away with him, and he was doing things that were completely irresponsible.  

If he'd thought that he could push aside the crawling notion that maybe he was beginning to imprint on Eggsy, at the moment, his brain had other ideas.

Apparently, one emotional shit-show wasn't enough. 

 

* * *

 

The days that followed were tense for Harry because with each passing hour, he was a step further away from Roxanne and a step closer to running into Mr. Baker. He had convinced Eggsy that him and Dean made a deal. Eggsy wouldn't go back until the payments from Henry Devere stopped coming in. The truth was that Dean had made a deal with him that still required Eggsy to visit the Black Prince, and as he'd been ditching the agreed upon dates for said visits, he assumed that Dean would come looking for Eggsy sooner or later. As such, he began to pull Eggsy along with him everywhere he went, and he never left the flat without an ankle shiv and a panic button. 

Eggsy, his regular, curious self, didn't notice a thing. He enjoyed following Harry on his errands, and even more than that, began to spend a lot of time with Lucas. Harry tried to keep the boy in the back of the shop on the days they were in because god knows the first place Dean would have looked was at Kingsman, but he couldn't do it well without arousing suspicion and so he kept himself between the front door and the two men instead, hoping that if anyone came snooping he could rectify the situation quickly enough.

“My sons never took to the craft, but I’ve always wanted to teach someone about this line of art.” Lucas told Eggsy one morning, laying out three different thatches of fabric. Eggsy watched him eagerly. "Henry tells me you're looking for a suit of your own."

"Yeah. I want one. Bit expensive, innit?"

Lucas looked over at Harry with an eyebrow raised. Surely he didn't think that Harry was going to make him  _pay_ for it. Harry and Eggsy had never discussed costs before, but since Harry had taken him to work the first time, they hadn't talked much else about the suit either and so he could see how Eggsy might be concerned about how he was going to afford it.

"It's on us, Eggsy," Harry corrected him. 

"How about I make it with you. Then maybe I earned it a bit better."

"Oh, that would be wonderful. I'd love to teach you." Lucas said. "First, how about we start with the measurements." 

"Okay," Eggsy said.

Lucas took him into the back where Harry couldn't see them, and in the lobby it went very quiet. He moved back and forth between one of the back rooms and the front desk, still trying to work out  _how_ he was going to maintain cover once he'd tied all the odds and ends on his current suit. He didn't think much about what Eggsy and Lucas were doing until the boy came back with a look of pure, unadulterated excitement on his face. Harry looked from Eggsy to the clock. Almost forty five minutes had passed.

"You busy?"

"Not necessarily." Harry said.

Eggsy grabbed Harry by the wrist of his suit and tugged him towards the back. Lucas was back there waiting with a tape measure in his hand.

"I wanna measure you," Eggsy told him. "Can I?"

"Well we can't leave the front desk unattended. As you've already measured me twice, I'll let Harry have a go. You can come and grab me when you're done."

Harry was happy that Eggsy was doing so well in such strange circumstances. He hadn't asked about Harry's meeting again since that night, and outside of being a little more clingy, there wasn't much that had changed since their first few meetings. Harry could tell that Eggsy was happy to be in the company of gentlemen who made their own suits. It was exciting, probably completely foreign, and he was taking to it like a fish in water. 

“Will you be making my suit, Eggsy?” Harry asked him.

“I want to, but Lucas says we should probably do mine first. ‘Sides. I’m shit at stitching.”

"Ah." Harry said. "So was I before I practiced. It'll only take you a minute or two to learn."

"You think if I learned that, Mr.Luke would hire me?"

"Oh, I'm sure of it," Harry said without hesitation. Kingsman could only improve by hiring a personality like Eggsy, and surely Lucas had noticed how badly the boy wanted to join. Honestly, both Lucas and Eggsy seemed equally invested in the idea of putting some young, new faces to the suits of London. "But just to be sure, we'll start the interview process now. Show me what he's taught you."

"Kay. Jacket off, sir." Eggsy smiled. "Makes it easier."

"More accurate," Harry corrected fondly. He peeled off his suit jacket and then turned to hang it on one of the available pegs on the wall. When he turned back, Eggsy was fussing with the tape measure. 

"Okay, trousers first. Better get started on them measurements since you've got fucking legs for days and it'll probably take me the longest."

"Cheeky," Harry said. "My legs are an appropriate size for a man my height."

"Fu- bugger off. Fine. We'll do top first." Eggsy said pointedly. 

Harry smiled. Eggsy's flirtatious attitude was a gift. It ironed out any awkward or stilted movements he made while running the tape measure between Harry's shoulder and his neck, Harry's shoulder and his wrist, the width of Harry's chest. The boy was focused, tracking numbers and mouthing them to himself as he figured them out, and then he pulled out a scratchpad from the back pocket of his jeans that Lucas had likely given him and he wrote them down with a pencil that he'd shoved behind his ear. Harry had missed it. How had he fucking missed that?

"While I got you, can I ask you something else?"

"Oh, god," Harry said. 

"How'd you find out about the Black Prince?"

Eggsy began to measure Harry's waist. He tugged the tape measure around Harry's body and pinned it, sticking two fingers under the band he'd made and tugging to make sure it was suitably done. There was a nice amount of slack in the measuring tape, but Harry didn't miss how firmly Eggsy's knuckles brushed against his muscles. Eggsy bit his lip and bent over to get a good look at the measurement.

"A friend," Harry said. "An  _old_ friend."

"You're pretty fit for a tailor."

"I appreciate my body and so I take care of it," Harry told him. He'd raised his arms up out of the way to give Eggsy more room to work, and found himself looking down his body to watch Eggsy start his leg measurements.

"Wonder what you'd do with other people's bodies if they let you at it," Eggsy said distractedly, penciling in another set of numbers. "Now I know why people pay for sex. I'd give me life savings to take a whack at you."

Harry felt extra warm. Eggsy spoke about Harry and sex like he spoke about the weather. He didn't seem to be aware that he was doing much more than simple conversation. On top of that, it'd been a long time since somebody had complimented Harry in that way. He felt a bit exposed in his embarrassment, and turned his head to look at the clock on the wall. Christ almighty. Somehow, only a few minutes had passed.

"Thank you," Harry said just as Eggsy dropped to his knees to finish up the trouser measurements. Harry gulped and closed his eyes, praying for vigilance and composure. Surely Eggsy hadn't needed to do  _that_. When he opened them again and looked down, Eggsy was smiling and biting his lip, cocky and amused. Harry quickly looked back up - clear to not make eye contact and encourage this behaviour any further. What he wouldn't have paid to have this happen outside of work. "Right."

"Right," Eggsy said, finishing up the measurements and returning the notepad and pencil to his back pocket. "C'mon. Let's go back up front then."

Harry hadn't felt so aware of his looks in years. He was distracted as he walked behind Eggsy to the lobby. He stared at the back of the boy's head, appreciating that he... appreciated Harry in that way. It made him feel good about himself. He was so distracted by his thoughts that he hardly noticed when Eggsy started going the  _wrong_ way, stumbling backwards and crashing into Harry's chest with a gasp on his breath. Harry made a sharp noise in his throat as Eggsy stepped on his toe, but the boy didn't apologize. He tripped his way back towards the changing room, and Harry couldn't possibly have put two and two together in the time it took to happen, but upon looking into the lobby and seeing Lucas talking to what seemed to be a very unsavory character, he understood. Somebody had come looking for Eggsy.

"Shit," Harry muttered to himself. 

"Henry," Lucas called, turning around to search for him. "Ah! Didn't know you'd come out. You have a visitor."

"Is Eg-"

"I can take it from here," Harry said loudly, cutting Lucas off. He didn't want Eggsy's name anywhere near a conversation with a mystery figure in the room. "But I believe there's an issue with something in the back, if you wouldn't mind checking on it."

"Oh, of course." 

Harry took a deep breath as Lucas headed for the back room with Eggsy, and then he fixed his eyes on the man in front of him. He was easily one of the tallest men that Harry had ever seen. He had black hair and green eyes, a lot of freckles, and he was dressed in a leather coat that looked as overbearing as he did. Harry only sized him up for a second before saying, "How can I help you?"

"I assume you don't remember me. It's been years since Helsinki."

"I'm afraid I can't place you at all."

"Ah, well. If you have a moment maybe I could catch you up to speed. Fill you in on the details."

"I don't have time."

"You should make time," The man said. He looked so smug and confident. Harry was tempted to snatch the shiv from his ankle and cut the man's throat with it. He'd never been so defensive in his life, but at this point in the conversation he was sure beyond doubt that none of this exchange was a mistake. This was someone who either knew who he was, or knew who he was pretending to be. Either scenario was dangerous, and with Eggsy attached to his hip, anything that happened to him threatened the boy, too. He wanted to make sure that nothing escalated before the boy was somewhere safe. There was no exit through the fitting rooms and so he had to consider that everything said and done right now had to stay in the lobby.

"Tell you what. I'll leave my number. I need for you to reach out to me within the next day or two. We can set up a time to meet. I'm flexible."

"I'll check my schedule. What exactly was this meeting about again?"

"Just... catching up." The man said. He yanked a wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a business card. He handed it to Harry and then took a deep breath, putting himself back together. Harry read the name 'Romanoff' on the card and knew immediately it was a fake. What was it with bad men and russian names, anyway, he mused before reading the card. When he looked over the address, his heart dropped to his stomach and he sank down a little into himself. There wasn't any way that this man lived at Grosvenor, and the fact that Harry's flat number was etched into the business card was perhaps more terrifying than this man's lack of identity. Perhaps this was the Mikhailov that Merlin was looking for.

"Well I - I... I have your number. I'll be in touch some way or another," Harry stuttered out. He needed to get Eggsy out of this building  _stat_. 

"Perfect," The man purred. He was in a bespoke suit too, Harry realized belatedly. It fit like a glove, underneath the man's black coat like a weapon. No doubt he had a few of those on him, too.

Harry and Eggsy were in deep, deep, shit, and it hadn't even been two weeks.

As quickly as he'd come in, the man sauntered out of the shop. Harry was still on pins and needles as he turned stiffly and all but ran back to the dressing room. He had barely stuck his head around the door when he said, "Eggsy, get your things. Lucas, I apologize for inconveniencing you, but I'm afraid an emergency has come up - yes, everything's alright - but Eggsy and I need to leave."

Harry wasn't sure the man had gone anywhere. For all they knew, he had come into the shop with ammo in his pockets and a group of goonies outside. The shop was too small to have a fire exit and so they had to go out the front, but Harry was terrified to walk Eggsy out there. Eggsy didn't look too excited to go either. He was pale, standing in the corner with his arms folded over his chest nervously. Lucas seemed to understand that something was wrong because he looked between Harry and Eggsy and said, "Should I call someone, or..."

"No, no, no. We can - we can do it. Uhm, Eggsy."

"Henry, we can't," Eggsy begged.

"We have to go. Come."

Lucas coaxed Eggsy to the other side of the room and walked him to Harry's side. The boy was in a hoodie. Harry couldn't really remember if he'd bought anything else, but he checked on the hooks for the boy's satchel and when he found nothing, asked Lucas to hold onto anything that belonged to Eggsy. They needed to go back to the penthouse and call Merlin. That was the only thing that they could do. Despite Harry's efforts, Eggsy'd been found by a man who had no name. It wasn't likely that the man was looking to make a scene - he'd asked Harry to call and so he was probably waiting. How much the man knew of anything wasn't clear. Harry had one job, and it was to keep Eggsy safe. That was a much more difficult task when he was a disoriented agent, and so he had to get Eggsy home. That's what he needed to do first.

 

* * *

 

Harry ordered lunch from their flat. He locked every door and window and called the front desk, warning them that absolutely no visitors were to be permitted. He wanted to call Merlin, but he knew that without more information from Eggsy, it was unlikely that they would get very far. He set the table for two with his hands shaking, and then he called Eggsy in pulled a chair out for him. Eggsy looked at him curiously, but it was clear that the boy's demeanor had changed since the shop, too. He was quieter than he had been that morning.

"I know you're gonna ask me about that bloke," Eggsy said before he'd even sat down.

"I know you know. I'm hoping you'll answer."

"What do you wanna know?" Eggsy asked. He pulled up his fork and began to move the food around on his plate, waiting for Harry to take his own seat across the table from him.

"Why you ran off when you saw him in the lobby."

"And I wanna know why Mr. Lucas says he's your mate. So an answer for an answer. You ain't just weird. You've actually got something going on and I wanna know what it is."

Harry looked down at his own plate. He couldn't tell Eggsy much. He could fabricate something that would keep the boy from harm, and that would keep him from jeopardizing what shards of his undercover identity remained in tact. At this point he had no idea how many people knew he was Harry Hart, senior detective. Eggsy was going to notice something.

"Alright. Here's what I can tell you. I've never seen that man before in my life. He isn't my friend. I'm not strange. I'm a man who has no plans to allow you to return to that lifestyle against your will. I'm sure you've noticed by now that you haven't gone back to Dean's. That's because I forbid it."

Eggsy chewed his food and then leaned back in his chair coolly. He seemed to be digesting something that Harry had said quite carefully. He stared at Harry until he was ready to break the silence.

"Okay. I'll tell you what I know. His name's not fucking Romanoff, for one. For two, I've never seen him leave his estate. That's why I ran. I reckon if I start seeing  _him_ out and about of all people, it's not a good sign."

"Why?"

"...he's a doctor. We only go see him for training and physicals. That's it. Dunno where he lives, dunno what the outside of his fucking house looks like," Eggsy shrugged. "It's not much to go on, but I know he ain't no good. It's like we're animals sometimes, honestly. They herd us in there, make us strip, stick their fingers up are arses then take us on a ride. I hate that fucking prick."

Eggsy's cheeks had gone marvelously red. He was shy. He spoke with the same confidence Harry had come to associate with him, but he was nervous. His voice was shaking and his whole body looked warm. He kept his eyes on his plate and fiddled with the food until Harry said, "It's alright, Eggsy. You don't have to... tell me anything else. I just need to know how dangerous this man is before we're in over our heads."

"I've never pissed him off, but Dean's dead scared of him so I'd assume... a little bit atleast. I suck his cock when I go over because I don't want him upset with me. He got mad at one of the girls a while ago and cut her into pieces. I'd rather not, mate, if I got the choice. I wanna be in one piece by the end of it all."

"He killed someone?"

"She'd grassed him up to some fed a while back. They couldn't catch him because he ain't got a name, and he looks different, and they can't ever prove it. Dyed his hair since last I saw him," Eggsy said. He hadn't eaten much of his food. Harry hadn't even touched what was on his plate. "Your turn again. Who's the friend that got you into the Black Prince."

"That's... none of your business."

"Make it my business."

"Eggsy -"

"No. Don't you dare. That fucking prick is looking for me, and I know it's because of you, so if I wanna know why the fucking sky is blue, I get to ask it. Question - why can't you fuck me?"

" _What?_ " Harry yelped.

"I shoulda known then. Who the  _fuck_ hires a prostitute and then watches movies with 'em. Lonely, yeah, I get it, but not you. You don't look the lonely type so fess up. What the fuck is actually wrong with you?"

"Sex has nothing to do with this," Harry said plainly. He pushed his plate away from himself and folded his hands on the table, leaning over onto the oak menacingly. "And I'd appreciate if we stayed on topic."

"That  _is_ on topic. Why do you look at me like you wanna fuck me, and then back off? Why do you get me whatever I want? Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere? Why does Rox call you Haz? Why did you break that fucking cup? It's all on topic, mate, and if I don't get answers, I swear to god I'll take my arse back to the Black Prince right now."

"Don't -"

"Tell me."

"Then don't ask those questions!"

"I will, because you  _bought me_."

"I never bought you!" Harry bellowed at him, clenching his fists and banging them on the table. Henry had bought Eggsy, not Harry. There had to be a difference between the two, and since he'd arrived in this fucking spacious flat with too many things, he'd lost count of the amount of times he actually believed there wasn't a line any more. He had gone too long without any recognition from Eggsy that he was a good person for what he was doing. He had gone too long with the weight of a dead child on his shoulders. He needed to tell somebody that he wasn't Henry, and that he was Harry, and that he had a life and he was going to be okay. 

It was painful to think that Harry didn't exist to Eggsy. Only Henry.

"I never did that," Harry whispered, hands throbbing. 

"But you did," Eggsy told him. It was much more quiet, curious, timid. Eggsy was shocked and he had good reason to be surprised by Harry's behaviour given the context that he had (and didn't have). "I was there when you did it."

"Just, please... don't." 

Harry didn't hear Eggsy stand up. He was lost in his own reflection in the table until Eggsy's joined it. The boy took a seat beside him carefully and then scooted towards him. Harry gave in and laid his head on the table, scared to the point of exhaustion of what had just transpired, and Eggsy reached out and ran his fingers through Harry's hair, ruining the hold. “I’m so sick, Eggsy.”

"Do you want a bath?" Eggsy asked. He laid his head down on the table and used his hand in Harry’s hair to tilt his head so that they were looking at each other. “Hey, tell me what you need.”.

What did Harry need? He didn't think. He only scooched his head forward until he was so close to Eggsy that there was no mistaking his intentions, and then he kissed the boy. Like every bell hadn't gone off in his head before now, he kissed Gary Unwin against his living room table, the boy's fingers wound in his hair. It was so brief but it was also the reassurance that Harry had been looking for. He might have taken it from anyone at the end of the day. He was a desperate man and he needed help. When Eggsy breathed out of his nose, Harry pulled away.

"My name is Harry."

Eggsy watched him closely. He said, "It's nice to meet you Harry. My name's Eggsy."

"It's... good to meet you, Eggsy."

"Should I call your Harry from now on then?"

"No," Harry said to him - eyes slipping shut. "I just wanted you to know."

"Okay then," Eggsy chuffed out. It was the last thing Harry heard before the bone-deep exhaust took over, and he fell asleep.

He hadn't meant to doze off, and so when a few hours passed and he came to, he was surprised to find Eggsy still laying beside him. The boy's arm was between them and he was snoring. 

It was likely that Harry wouldn't have woken at all, judging by the stale taste in his mouth, if his phone hadn't been ringing. The shrill sound of it echoed throughout the flat and it was almost impossible to ignore. It stopped ringing before he could stand up, only to start up again a second later, and it took all of his willpower to push himself up out of his seat and go for it. He wasn't surprised that Eggsy hadn't moved. The boy was on another astral plane when he fell asleep - almost impossible to wake unless you were doing it  _very_ purposefully.

Harry answered his phone and new what he sounded like, with his gruff, "Hello?"

" _Henry! My god, are you and Eggsy alright?"_

"Lucas. I'm sorry. Time slipped away from me." 

" _No, no. It's alright. You both seem to have run into an issue of some sort..."_ Lucas started.  _"I'm calling because the boy has had a visitor stopping in and I was curious as to if it was someone you knew. Dean Baker?"_

Oh, shit. Harry took a deep breath and then looked over his shoulder to check for Eggsy. When he was sure the boy was still asleep in the other room, he said, "Eggsy is unavailable, unfortunately. Those men are loan sharks. Ruthless, really. Please tell them that he'll no longer be working with you at Kingsman and they should leave you be."

_"Yes. Right. Well I wish him all the best."_

"Of course," Harry said. If only Harry had told Lucas something closer to the truth. He was hoping that someday he'd be able to see Lucas outside of this alternate persona and they could be friends. He hung up the phone after a quick and polite goodbye, and cut his losses. No matter what happened from this point out, now, the case was definitely in jeopardy. Harry had all but given himself new objectives: Keep Eggsy safe, find Mikhailov,  _and_ avoid Dean Baker. Suddenly London was seeming awful small, and Harry didn't want anything to do with it. 

 


	4. That I Should Know...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me tell ya'll that I rewrote this story. Never change tenses on yourself because it took me two weeks to change it LOL. It was tedious work, why did I do that?! Anyway - you don’t have to read it again because the plot is the same with the exception of 2 changes in Chapter 3. If you’d like to reread that one then it might help this chapter make a bit more sense. I hope you all enjoyed this. I realized that my writers block might've been in part because of the story itself and so I made minor changes here and there that actually made the story longer (?). As you can see I added another chapter to the total count and it was really necessary because I felt like I was missing something. The next one will be the last one. This time I promise. Okay, I'll try and finish it out strongly. I haven't given up on it yet.

 

Eggsy slept for longer than Harry expected. During that time, Harry walked around the house and organized his thoughts, separating them into two categories - the royal fuckup that was his undercover career in general, and then the _even more_ royal fuckup that was kissing one of his victims in what was clearly a moment of madness.

He mulled over the first category first. The way Harry saw it, there were only three choices left, and returning Eggsy to the Black Prince wasn’t one of them.

In an error of judgement, Harry had already told Eggsy his real name. Certainly when the boy woke up he was going to ask about it. So one choice was to just tell Eggsy the truth. If he could convince the boy that his fabricated personality was necessary for keeping the boy safe, then maybe the fallout would be minimal and he could depend on Eggsy’s help for the remainder of the mission. It wasn’t likely that Eggsy would be _happy_ about it - who would be happy to find out that one’s father wasn’t one’s father at all? But maybe it was something they could navigate.

But the second choice wasn’t much better. He could maintain cover and move Eggsy to another flat on the other side of London. The Met had certainly given Henry the means to do it and maintaining cover meant that if something went awry, Eggsy didn’t have any incriminating information that could be used against him. It was a safeguard as much as an attempt to remain Henry Devere for a bit longer.  

Then Harry also considered his third choice - taking Eggsy back to the Met and then going after Dean Baker himself. It was by far the best option when considering how to keep _Eggsy_ safe, but it did few favors for Roxanne Morton who was currently missing and presumably in grave danger. One whiff of Harry being an undercover and he suspected that they might put a bullet through Roxy’s skull to keep her mum. She had been the most recent victim, after all. It was likely the only reason she had survived.

All three made victims of them both anyway. It wasn’t like any one option fixed Eggsy’s circumstances, after all. He was still a young man who’d spent much of his life in the basement of a pub, servicing the scum of London during their lunch breaks. There wasn’t much that Harry could do to rectify that, but that brought him to his second category.

How in the _fuck_ could he have kissed Eggsy in the first place?

No matter which angle he considered it from, it was a mistake that he couldn’t justify. It made him sick to even think about how unstable he was as a detective that he could take advantage of Eggsy in that way. He had somehow separated the young man in the dining room from the little boy he’d been hired to save. He couldn't stomach that thought at all.

He had to apologize, and then he had to tell Eggsy that it wouldn’t happen again. It was the only way to draw the line back in the sand and regather some semblance of _boundary_ between the two of them. It was also the only way to keep the boy focused - so that he could prioritize his own safety over the question of what Harry had meant by what he’d done.

In search of another perspective, Harry took his mobile to the bathroom with him and locked himself in. He called Merlin.

“ _Henry,”_ Merlin answered. He sounded irritated.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked immediately.

“ _The office is in shambles, wondering what’s happened to the case since we put you on it. Please forgive the brevity, but what the fuck is it about you that attracts madness? I’ve honestly been waiting for you to call.”_

“I think I may have found Mikhailov. I also think I may have made a large mistake.”

 _“Right.”_ Merlin said tightly. _“Mikhailov first.”_

“I -” Harry started. “I took Eggsy to work with me. Someone came looking for him. I’d never seen him before but he said that he knew me. Old classmates. He gave me a card and told me to call. How should I proceed?”

“ _What was on the card?”_

“This address,” Harry said. “He knows where we are. He’s taunting me. I’ve never seen him before in my life. None of the briefings. Nothing.” Harry was growing paranoid. If the man knew where he and Eggsy were at, then certainly the room could have been bugged. Further, the man might have been a neighbour or another customer at the hotel. He could have been watching Harry for weeks before he stopped into Kingsman to see him face to face.

Harry didn’t feel like he had the upper hand anymore. Instead, he felt completely trapped and ill-prepared. “This has to be Mikhailov.”

_“It’s possible. I need a physical description of the man - everything you can remember.”_

Harry went through the details that he could remember. Some had slipped away from him in his panic, but there were distinguishing marks that he latched onto like a vice: tall man, dark hair, light eyes, well dressed. All in all, he’d succeeded in describing half of London. He could hear the scritching of Merlin’s pen over the line as he wrote down what Harry said.

“It’s not enough,” Harry told himself. He rubbed his head and tried to drag out any details that would separate his perpetrator from the rest of the city, but there weren’t any.

 _“If that’s all you can recall, it’s enough,”_ Merlin assured him. _“I’m not sure if this is Mikhailov. We’ve made next to no headway on locating him_ or _Ms. Morton on our side, but the situation only gets worse if we make a mistake in this man’s identity. It’s in our best interest to gather as much information as possible before we make another judgement call.”_

“I don’t know if we’re safe here,” Harry said. “I don’t know what to do.”

_“It’s sticky, Henry. Stay where you are for now. We’ll send someone to detail you.”_

“Don’t send someone here,” Harry hissed into his phone. He adjusted on his seat and tried to cover the mouthpiece so that none of his words were lost to the space around him. “Merlin, they could kill us. I think that there’s somebody here and that they’ve been here for a long time, watching me.” He didn’t include his concern that his entire flat had been bugged. He wondered what level of paranoia was considered insane in this situation. “What is my job right now? What should I be doing?”

_“...you should be protecting yourself, and then protecting Eggsy. This is what we asked of you going in. Whatever target was on your back that allowed you to be identified, we overlooked, and we’re sorry. None of what’s happened these last weeks is your fault. It was an oversight on our behalf. Going forward we need to acknowledge that we may not have the upper hand, and that the young men and women we were trying to save by holding off may never come back to us. Right now you’re in danger, and we have two options - to take you out or to leave you in. If we take you out, we have to consider taking Eggsy out too. Sending him back puts his life in jeopardy, taking him out puts Roxanne’s life in jeopardy, granted she’s still alive in the first place. The entire situation is risk and benefit, and we need to decide right now who do we risk, and to what benefit.”_

“I thought this through, too,” Harry said. “And I can’t allow that young woman to die because of our oversights. I have to stay.”

 _“And Eggsy_?”

Harry had lost himself earlier in this question. There wasn’t a course of action that removed Eggsy from danger without also putting his identity and motive at risk. At the end of it, either Harry maintained his false identity or he discarded it. In both cases, he was exposing someone to a threat.

_“Henry?”_

“I told him my name.” Harry admitted. “I kissed him.”

“... _who?_ ”

Harry dropped his head and leaned down onto his free arm. “Eggsy.”

Merlin was silent for a long minute. There wasn’t really an expected response from what Harry had told him. He wasn’t sure what the man would say when he spoke next.

“ _Isolation… can create desperation.”_ Merlin said quietly. _“That… I… of course there’s… Harry,_ why’d _you do it?”_

“I wasn’t thinking. I was delirious. It was a mistake.”

_“I gathered that much. I just… I can’t…”_

“I know.” Harry said. He had never been ashamed of his work or decisions before. This one choice seemed to be diminishing his entire livelihood - and hearing Merlin at a sincere loss for words only made him feel worse. His head ached so severely and he wanted to go home. He had never found himself in such a vulnerable position before.

 _“Listen to me, Harry,”_ Merlin said. _“We’ve all made mistakes. You’re under a lot of stress right now and I don’t think it’s abnormal for you to need someone. I’m begging you, don’t make that someone Eggsy. He can’t handle it.”_

“That’s not my intention.” Harry said.

_“I know. But our intentions don’t always align with the reality of what we do.”_

“How do I fix it?”

_“Can I be honest? I think that perhaps Eggsy has been through far too much to look so closely at this. You, on the other hand…”_

“It’s not right.”

“ _And I hardly imagine Lee will take kindly to it. Perhaps you should speak with Tilde. This might become a problem.”_

“Of course.” Harry said. “No, I - it wasn’t a conscious decision.”

_“That makes it much more dangerous, don’t you think?”_

Harry sighed and took the phone away from his ear for a moment. Merlin was absolutely right. It was more worrisome that he’d done it without thinking. Subconsciously, he’d wanted Eggsy’s lips. He’d wanted to feel Eggsy’s warm skin. He’d wanted the boy’s attention badly enough to take without asking and this was the result. He was sitting on a toilet wondering how he could be lacking so much self control.

When Merlin called out for him, Harry raised the phone back to his ear.

_“- you can. You’ll be able to think much more clearly once you’ve come out of Henry’s shoes, I think. Until then, let’s find Mikhailov and get Roxanne back.”_

“Yes.” Harry said weakly, and then more firmly, “Yes, yes. Alright. I have to gather my thoughts a bit more closely.”

_“As you’ve already told Eggsy your real name, it’s safe to assume that your cover isn’t reliable. Keep that in mind as you proceed.”_

“I know. Though I feel it’s been compromised for longer than we were aware.”

Merlin couldn’t disagree. It was obvious that they’d been wholly unprepared for whatever had happened within those first few days. He told Harry to call him before the night had ended, once he’d made a decision on which method of damage control he thought was appropriate, and then he said his goodbyes and let Harry go.

The bathroom was quiet for a long while after Harry had hung up. Eventually it was Eggsy’s knocking on the door that forced him out of his trance.

“Yes, Eggsy?”

“Can I come in?”

“I’ll come out.” Harry said. He pocketed his mobile phone and then stood up. His legs were stiff and he had difficulty getting to the door but he managed well enough. He unlocked it and pried it open, and there was Eggsy looked well-slept, with his hair in shambles and his eyes still holding that glossy, early morning look. Harry cleared his throat.

“What was you doing in the bathroom?”

“Speaking to a friend,” Harry answered.

“You was in there a long time, too,” Eggsy said. “Something about me?”

Harry smiled at Eggsy and said, “Of course. But only good things.”

Eggsy looked skeptical. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly, gesturing to the bathroom over Harry’s shoulder. “I gotta go.”

Harry wondered if Eggsy felt awkward at all. It didn’t seem like the boy was any different, but Harry had assumed that the first conversation they had would be about the kiss. He was pleasantly surprised that Eggsy hadn’t made a reference to it. He stepped aside and let Eggsy pass, watching the boy close the door on him a second later.

For a brief moment, he wondered if it was appropriate for him to bring it up if Eggsy didn’t call it to conversation first, but Eggsy’s lack of response made it much easier to focus on other things, like what he was going to do for the rest of the evening, and what that meant for the remainder of the case. He walked to his bedroom and laid himself out on the mattress, and then he waited for some solution to come to him.

At some point Eggsy emerged from the bathroom and joined Harry in his bedroom. He kept enough space between them after he’d crawled up onto the mattress, but he didn’t look upset. He looked cautious.

“Did you sleep well?” Harry asked.

“Yeah…” Eggsy said. “You?”

Harry shook his head. “I’ve been a bit antsy, I’m afraid.”

Eggsy made himself comfortable by adjusting onto his side facing Harry, and then propping his head up on his arm. Harry had to make a decision quickly because the way Eggsy had laid himself out only meant one thing: he was ready for answers. So Harry allowed himself to look as vulnerable as he felt. He wasn’t sure if admitting he was an agent was wise. He wasn’t sure if Eggsy would trust him enough to cooperate with the remainder of the case. But he was willing to do what he could to assuage Eggsy’s suspicion and keep the case moving forward.

“Let’s start with what you’ve already figured out…” Harry said quietly.

“That you’re full of shit.” Eggsy told him. “Got that part.”

Harry sighed and said, “Anything else that you’ve gathered from our time together?”

“That seems to be… really central to all the other shit.”

He wasn’t wrong. Harry being a liar was responsible for every unexplainable encounter they’d had so far. The fact that Eggsy was likely putting that together now certainly made Harry’s cover maintenance much more difficult. In saying that he knew Harry was a complete and total liar, Eggsy had basically chosen an option for him. He had to give some of his false identity up.

“I’m not Henry,” Harry started. “I think we got that far last night.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m… I’m not sure how to explain this.”

Eggsy looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Mate - how about just tell the _fucking truth_.”

“I can’t. Not all of it. Not right now,” When Eggsy shifted to get up off of the bed, Harry reached out and stopped him. “Wait - Eggsy. I can tell you some things, but please trust me. There are other things that you’re better off without.”

Eggsy had every right to be upset. He frowned at Harry and then yanked his hoodie from Harry’s fingers, settling back down into his earlier position. He looked so angry that Harry almost backtracked, and when he said, “Fine. Tell me what you can,” It came from the boy’s chest, low and grumbled from between his teeth.

Harry took a deep breath and then said, “My name is Harry and you’re in danger. I’m here to protect you.”

“And who sent you?”

“I can’t say right now.”

“I ain’t stupid.” Eggsy said. “That man came into the shop last time, did he send you?”

“I’m not sure if I should say it.”

“So you’re a fed?”

At this point, what did Harry have left to lose? If he wanted to maintain any of his false identity, he had to provide _something_. He couldn’t dodge this question and Eggsy wasn’t stupid enough to fall for a hasty fabrication of Merlin’s identity, too. He sighed and rolled over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. He decided. He could tell Eggsy about this, but he couldn’t tell the boy about Roxanne, and he couldn’t tell the boy the truth about his history. He decided to draw the line where they were right here - he was a fed. That was true.

“Yes.”

Eggsy went eerily silent. He watched Harry with an unreadable expression, but he stayed where he was. Harry thought that that had to count for something.

“Why are you here?”

“For you.”

“Why are you here for me?”

“You’re in danger.”

Eggsy sat up again and looked Harry dead in his eyes. “Stop talking in fucking circles, Harry. Answer the question. Who sent you and why did they send you _for me_?”

“I was sent by the Metropolitan Police Service. That’s… that’s all I can say. I know that it’s unfair of me to ask this of you, but I need for you to trust me. More information than what you currently know won’t keep you from danger. I insist that I not answer any more. I understand that you’re upset. I was - _we_ were irresponsible in preparing and because of it, you’re in a position that you don’t deserve to be in.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay, Harry. Thanks, but what the _fuck_ am I gonna do with this? I can't go back to Dean after hanging with a fucking fed.”

Eggsy hadn’t drawn the conclusion that Harry had made the most obvious. The boy wasn’t going back to Dean’s. Ever.

“I’ve told you before, you won’t be going back there,” Harry said.

Eggsy just rolled his eyes. Whether it was believable or not, it was the truth. Harry absolutely refused to let Dean set another hand on Gary Unwin. He’d done more than enough to the boy already.

“You can’t just keep saying that. At some point you’re gonna actually have to figure out what that means for me,” Eggsy responded.

Harry _had_ thought about it, perhaps more than any other person in the world. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Eggsy couldn’t have said such an offhanded comment to _anyone_ and caused the same level of upset, because all Harry had done since he walked into this flat was think about that exact statement. What did all of this mean for Eggsy? When they were finished, where did that leave him? How was he to cope with it all?

“Right. Okay, then let’s talk about one more thing.” Eggsy said.

“The kiss,” Harry guessed.

“Yeah. What was that all about?”

Harry wasn’t sure. He hadn’t had enough time to fully mull over it. He said what came to mind instead.

“It was an accident.”

“That sort of shit don’t really happen on accident, accident though. You must have wanted to do it...”

It was essentially the same warning Merlin had cooed over the phone. The subconscious desire to kiss Eggsy had sprung up from somewhere, and Harry had to identify where before it happened again. If all it took was a dose of bad luck and a terrible night’s sleep to make him act against his very nature as an officer, he needed to account for that.

“You’re right. It was inexcusable. I’m sorry.”

"You are the  _sorriest_ fucking man, ain't you?" Eggsy scoffed. "Is that all you can say? Is that, like, supposed to help? Coz it don't. Not really."

Harry easily agreed. At this point in his career, there wasn't any other adjective to describe his state of being. Almost everything he did required some sort of apology and it was quite pitiful, really. If he were Eggsy, he'd have been frustrated by the apologies, too.

It was at this point that Eggsy realized that Harry's responses weren't  _actually_ going to tackle any of the issues. They weren't going to give Eggsy any clue about the things he actually wanted to know. They weren't going to be much more then self-deprecating apologies, something that the boy had surely heard enough of.

Eggsy sighed, “Yeah, alright,” and dropped the conversation, throwing the room into an awkward silence.

It wasn’t lost on Harry that Eggsy was taking the information quite well. The boy had been irritated, yes, which was Harry's expectation, but the boy was still here. He hadn't gone anywhere. 

On a pile of other thoughts to sift through, Harry was beginning to wonder if Eggsy was even human at all.

 

* * *

 

“How can I help?”

At some point Harry had rolled out of bed and taken a seat on the floor. He was cradling his mobile in one palm and Mikhailov’s business card in the other. He considered taking the bait - something that he'd need Merlin's help on because time permitted, any calls to a perpetrator had to be traced and recorded. But Harry wasn’t sure if he had time, and he wasn't sure if taking the bait was such a good idea after all. 

Eggsy had been patiently waiting on the bed for Harry to make a move.

“If you’d be so kind as to make me a cup of tea, Eggsy, that would be lovely.”

“You tryna get rid of me?”

“In a way, yes," Harry laughed. "I need to make a call." 

“I thought you needed my help.” Eggsy said.

“I do. I will. Just not for this.”

Eggsy begrudgingly saw himself from the room. He made it to the door before he shot a dirty look over his shoulder. When Harry responded with an apologetic look of his own, Eggsy sighed and just turned himself into the hallway, politely closing Harry’s door behind him.

Harry called Merlin and set up the trace. It was a quick and easy process; it was something that he'd been prepared for. This time felt different, regardless. Harry felt sick to his stomach. The phone he was gripping in his hand had gone damp from the sweat of his palms, and his shirt felt too tight around his body.

He still waited the few minutes he promised Merlin and then dialed the number. It only rang once. Harry waited a second but the line was otherwise quiet.

“Hello?” Harry asked.

Nothing. Somebody had picked up, and he could hear the residual sounds of someone shifting on the other line, but there was no voice. Harry tried to get their attention a second time, muttering, “Hello” into the phone.

“ _Hi_.”

The voice that answered was incredibly familiar. It was high, breathy, shaking with either excitement, anxiety, or fear. It was very likely a young woman in a very dangerous situation.

“Hello, Roxanne.”

He’d only heard her voice and it was a shot in the dark to even greet her by name, but he needed confirmation that she was alive and well. There wasn't anybody else that it could have been. 

_“Are you Harry Hart?”_

Harry hadn’t ever been on a roller coaster, but he imagined that the painful churning in his gut was reminiscent of somebody’s first ride, strapped into a small car with the body exposed, waiting to drop. The ground felt like it had disappeared from beneath him and bile crawled up his throat.

_“Hello? Are you Harry Hart, please.”_

“This is…” Harry started before pausing. He then cleared his throat and said as clearly as he could, “This is Harry Hart, yes.”

_“Do you have Eggsy?”_

“I have him.” Harry said. “I won’t be returning him to the Black Prince.”

He wasn’t sure if it was something he should have said out loud but, at the very least, he had given up all pretense of being Henry Devere. His cover was completely useless. The most it had ever given him was a foot in the door of the Black Prince where Dean had been too irresponsible to recognize him as a public servant. Otherwise it had done shitall to protect his real identity.

_“You have to bring him here. You understand, yes? They're not just letting you take him.”_

Harry choked on a response. He couldn’t agree to that stipulation.

“I can come,” Harry offered. “Where are you? I’ll be there. The boy doesn’t-”

 _“It’s non-negotiable. There can be either zero casualties, or one casualty,”_ Roxanne said quietly. After a brief pause, she admitted, _“I don’t want him to die. Honestly.”_

“Are you alone right now?” Harry asked.

 _“No.”_ Roxy told him, voice still wavering. _“I’m a little bit worried. I think this is all I can say. I should go.”_

“Please, there has to be -”

Harry was hit with a dial tone before he could spit it out. It was so swift that he couldn’t quite grip a logical response, instead only pleading with Roxanne to change the stipulations so that he wouldn’t have to drag Eggsy headfirst into a potentially lethal situation. But she had ended the call before he’d even made it that far, and Harry found himself left with the impossible task of deciding, yet again, which route was safest to take.

He sank to the floor with the phone still against his ear, well aware that Roxanne was no longer on the line.

 

* * *

 

Harry could remember Lee and Michelle’s house. He’d only been there once and it was when Gary was two years old, in 1993. It was a humble abode on Springbank Road and he could recall in detail everything about it - the Rosebays in the front garden that Michelle had introduced him to on the walk in, the black fireplace in the sitting room that Lee had never used, the packing boxes in the hallway that were stacked on top of one another, and the crayon markings on the wall that they were pushed up against.

He also remember meeting Gary.

The boy was running between rooms, right on the heels of Lee’s partner, Percival. He hadn’t been watching where he was running and had hip-checked one of the boxes _right_ in front of Harry, and had gone stumbling to Harry’s feet, making a loud ‘oof’ as he hit the wooden floor.

Percival had gasped and turned around to pick the boy up before he could cry, and then he’d stuck the boy on his hip and turned to Harry with a wide smile on his face.

“Have you ever met Lee’s son?” Percival had asked him.

“I don’t think I have,” Harry told him, subconsciously shifting his wine glass away from the little one. The boy had his eyes on it. “And who would this young man be?”

“This is Gary Unwin.” Percival said. “And he’s got this thing that once he likes you… well he’s a sticky little bugger. I’ve spent the entire party trying to get him to say hello to his mother instead, but... well. As you can see.”

“Ah,” Harry said. He set his champagne glass down on one of the closed boxes and extended his arms. “I’m not sure if he’ll be convinced, but let’s give it a go.”

Percival handed Gary off and Harry took him confidently. The boy was staring at him with his mouth open and his eyes wide. He was a curious little thing, weighed no more than a sack of potatoes, and Harry said, “Hello, Gary. It’s nice to meet you.”

Percival seemed to hover nervously beside both of them until Gary reached out to touch Harry’s nose, messing with his nostrils and then saying, “node.”

“Nose. Very good,” Harry said to him.

Percival sighed happily and then smacked Harry on the back, laughing, “Look at that, Harry. He likes you.”

Until Harry met “Eggsy”, the twenty five year old prostitute kidnapped in 1993, two days after Harry had carried the boy around on his hip and heard, ‘he likes you’, it was the only thing anyone had ever said about what the boy thought of him. He wasn’t sure there was any significance in remembering it at all considering that the boy wouldn’t have remembered it himself, and the boy wasn’t really the same boy he’d met that day at Lee’s house.

Still, it was a bit nice to have a memory to fall back on. Soon, Harry was going to have to tell Eggsy the truth about who he was, and it wasn’t likely that he was ever going to hear ‘he likes you’ again.

 

* * *

 

When Eggsy found Harry after the phone call, he came bearing goods.

Wine, specifically.

He knocked on the door lightly and then let himself in before Harry could answer, tiptoeing around the bed and offering him a tall glass.

“Thought you might need this,” Eggsy said. “I know I do.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking.” Harry said. He took a sip of whatever was in the glass and then sighed because he couldn’t even take his own advice. He had to wait for Merlin to get in touch with him before he could make any decisions, and in the meantime was trying not to do anything rash. “I’m so sorry, Eggsy.”

“Yeah. I know. Really, I know.” Eggsy said. He hesitated with his own glass in hand, and then he took a deep breath and dropped down to the floor beside Harry, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable. He sat close enough for Harry to smell the raspberry conditioner that the boy had ordered from housekeeping in the days before. “So what’s going on, then? I mean… that you _can_ tell me.”

“I need help.” Harry said. “And I can’t… I can’t figure it all out. How did this happen? How could we have been so ill-prepared when we had so many years to get it right?”

“Years?” Eggsy asked.

Harry took a large swig of his wine and then looked over at Eggsy. “Would you believe it? How quickly I gave myself up?”

When Eggsy looked back at him, he looked slightly forlorn. His cheeks were a pink and his eyes had lost that lively, alert expression that Harry had come to appreciate. It wasn’t as if the boy had much to be happy about, all things considered.

“Have I already apologized?” Harry asked more quietly.

“Dont. Apologize again,” Eggsy laughed back. He took another sip of his wine and said, “You've done it too many times, but your flat’s got complimentary wine so I can’t be too pissy.”

“Mmm.” Harry said.

He was raising his glass to his lips a third time when he paused, eyes focused on the window in front of him.

For all of the services that Grosvenor had, complimentary wine wasn’t one of them. They charged for any and all alcohol that came from their kitchen.

“Complimentary?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. Dropped it off about… half an hour ago? I think.”

Harry looked down at his cup and then lifted it to his eye, peering in closely at the contents. It hadn’t tasted strange, and he hadn’t ingested that much, but a lack of panic wasn’t a very good sign. He reached out and took Eggsy’s glass from his hands, right as the rim touched the boy’s lips again.

“Oi - what’re you do- _Harry_.”

“Did you order this drink?” Harry asked him.

“I told you it was complimentary!” Eggsy yelled at him.

“Even complimentary things need to be ordered when you’re having them delivered to your flat,” Harry grunted, taking both cups and standing up. He felt light and clear-headed, something he hadn’t felt in weeks. Months. Years, even. There was never a more obvious red flag. “I’m assuming you didn’t order this and that means we’re in a bit of a situation. I would tell you to go to the bathroom and vomit,” Harry said calmly. He’d never felt this in control of _anything_ in his life. He’d definitely ingested something. “But most drugs take effect between 5 and 25 minutes. I’m assuming that whatever we’ve taken is currently being digested and that residual effects will maintain even if we throw the rest of it up. It’s been… seven minutes already.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eggsy asked him. He stood up too.

“Grosvenor doesn’t offer complimentary wine,” Harry told him. He looked around wildly for his cellphone. He might’ve lacked the adrenaline to fire himself up, but he maintained his common sense. He needed to call Merlin. “Rohypnol. It’s an anti-anxiety, but also a very powerful sedative. I assume this is... we’ve only got ten minutes. We’ve used f-five and I still need to make a… a call, but I can’t find… _christ_. Would you help me look for my phone, Eggsy?”

“What’s it look like?”

“It’s just a big…” Harry mumbled. His words were like cement, trying to crawl out of his mouth and hardening on the way, never quite reaching the space between the two of them. He felt lightheaded. It dawned on him that by the time he'd gotten to his mobile, he wasn’t going to be able to make _any_ calls. How he could’ve been so stupid at the climax of such a dangerous case was something he was likely going to regret for the rest of his life, but he had made a grave error, and he was feeling the effects of it more clearly with each second that passed. 

Eggsy was talking to him. He sounded warped and fragmented, like some demonic doppelganger. Even the boy’s face as he stepped up to Harry and helped him lay down on the mattress began to morph into something sinister, vile, disgusting.

“Oh, god,” Harry said, pushing Eggsy away from him wildly. “No - go. Please, go.”

“Harry -”

“Please go. Please go, Eggsy. Please, please go.”

Eggsy looked worried, and then he looked angry, and then his eyes began to droop down the length of his face and he said, “Do not be afraid. Our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift.” The room was quiet for only a second, with Eggsy standing inhumanly still beside the mattress and watching Harry from eyes that weren’t correctly in their sockets. Then the boy crawled up onto the bed with him. One arm contorted and bent backwards the second it touched the mattress and the other remained a normal, straightened appendage. Eggsy continued easily, “And now, I pray you, tell me who you are. Do not be harder than I've been with you that in the world your name may still endure.”

“I’m Harry,” Harry whispered, scared out of his wits. “I’m Harry Hart. And I’m so sorry, Eggsy, that I couldn’t find you sooner.”

Eggsy crawled over him and his face wasn’t Eggsy’s face at all. He was someone else - someone that Harry had never seen, and someone that Harry wouldn’t ever want to see again. Perhaps Harry was looking at the face of the devil himself, with eyes as black as charcoal and a mouth dripping saliva.

He was hallucinating, and he was hallucinating terribly.

It occurred to Harry for only a fraction of a second that this was it. His mind was sinking so quickly into a rabbit hole that he wasn’t sure of a way to safeguard either of them against the consequences of it. When he woke up (if he woke up at all), there wasn’t any guarantee that he’d see Eggsy again.

Harry wasn’t quite sure if he could live through that possibility a second time.


End file.
